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Letter signatories Hollande, Jelinek, Zapatero (from left)
Photo: CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON / EPA-EFE / Leonhard Foeger;
Reuters / Carlos Alvarez / Getty Images
More than 140 former heads of state and government and Nobel Prize winners call in an open letter to the Chancellor candidates Olaf Scholz (SPD), Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Armin Laschet (CDU) to campaign for the release of Covid-19 vaccine patents.
»Germany has contributed to the development of the most successful vaccine technology against the coronavirus Covid-19. And it can make a decisive contribution to ending this pandemic if it now defies pharmaceutical monopolies and insists that this technology be shared, ”the appeal said. The Chancellor candidates would have to speak out in favor of renouncing intellectual property rights and the transfer of technologies for vaccines and making this "the political task of a future government coalition." The letter was published on Monday evening and was available to SPIEGEL in advance.
The signatories include the former Heads of State Tarja Halonen from Finland and François Hollande from France, the former Prime Ministers José Luis Zapatero (Spain) and Gordon Brown (Great Britain) and the Austrian Nobel Prize laureate Elfriede Jelinek
The appeal was coordinated by the People's Vaccine Alliance, an association of more than 70 aid and non-governmental organizations such as Oxfam, Global Justice Now and the Yunus Center.
Activists are planning a series of protests for their cause this week.
With the open letter, the signatories are trying to initiate a change of course for the future federal government after the general election on the weekend after next.
They are "deeply concerned that Germany is still rejecting a temporary suspension of the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for intellectual property," the authors write - and that at a time when "the artificial restriction of production and thus supply leads to thousands of preventable deaths from Covid-19 every day. "
Future federal government should support exemption
In low-income countries, for example, only about two percent of adults are fully vaccinated on average;
in high-income countries, on the other hand, often more than half.
According to statistics from the Robert Koch Institute, a good 62 percent of all citizens in Germany have so far been fully vaccinated.
The signatories are calling on the three candidates for chancellor to support a comprehensive exemption from the TRIPS agreement on the protection of intellectual property for all Covid-19-related technologies at the WTO.
This exemption was proposed by India and South Africa in October 2020.
It is now supported by more than 100 governments, including those of the United States and France.
Germany, however, where the mRNA pioneers Biontech and Curevac are based, rejects them.
Manufacturers absolutely want to have their patents protected.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is on her side.
The next federal government has to change direction, demand the authors of the open letter - and ensure that German pharmaceutical companies share their mRNA vaccine technology quickly and transparently with qualified manufacturers all over the world.
"The new Federal Chancellor will have the extraordinary power to turn the tide in this terrible pandemic," said Nobel Prize winner for economics Joseph Stiglitz.
"The next federal government can be the one that is remembered to have saved millions of lives." It is time for Germany to ensure the transfer of vaccine technologies.
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