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Two days before the recent German election, crowds gathered in cities across the country, demanding serious action on climate change. After catastrophic floods this summer, and protests from school climate strikers and anti-coal activists in recent years, climate breakdown overtook COVID as the issue of most concern to German voters, according to pollsters tracking attitudes in the run-up to the vote.
That this has become a significant political issue is a powerful demonstration of how social movements can shift the very ground on which political battles are fought.
Earlier this year, Germany's constitutional court found that the country's climate targets weren't ambitious enough, forcing Angela Merkel's government to adopt stricter climate targets for 2030, and neutrality by 2045. The case, brought by young climate activists, is just one way that the Fridays for the Future movement, and those around it, have transformed German politics.
As one journalist covering the election told me, you used to have to look hard for discussion of climate policy in Germany. This time, it was a central feature of almost every party's manifesto and a keystone in the press coverage of the vote.
The question of what impact that will have on the carbon cycle is being discussed as I write.
Hosted by our expert journalists on the ground, you'll get an exclusive take on COP26 events as they unfold direct to your inbox.
Expect news, in-depth analysis, and a carefully curated round-up of links from our global team, campaigners and other media sites to keep you updated on everything that's going on before, during and after this vitally important event.`
For decades, much of the country has been powered by lignite, dirty brown coal that the Ende Gelaende civil disobedience movement has long mobilised against. In the current coalition negotiations between the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats, the question isn't whether these power stations and the mines that come with them should close. The issue will be how, and how fast. Will it be required by the state, or left to the market forces of the EU's emissions-trading scheme? Will a final closure date of 2038 remain, or will it be brought sooner?
That this has become a significant political issue is a powerful demonstration of how social movements can shift the very ground on which political battles are fought. Merkel herself has admitted that school strikers have forced her to be much more ambitious.
The negotiations over the next government are likely to last at least until the end of the year, meaning Merkel will remain Germany's leader through the Glasgow talks, and is likely to use the conference as a last chance to present herself as 'the climate chancellor'.
At the conference, Germany will negotiate as part of the EU block, which has struggled to agree on a position in recent weeks. While wealthier western European countries tend to want carbon-reduction targets to apply within five years, poorer states in eastern Europe prefer ten-year targets. Announcing the conclusions of internal EU negotiations last week, the Council of Ministers produced a classic fudge: "The council expresses, with a view to reaching consensus in Glasgow, its preference for a common time frame of five years".
The difference between five and ten years might not seem much. But it's important to remember that greenhouse gases going in the atmosphere are more like a bath than a shower: it's the total volume that matters, and all of the physical evidence is that the bath is about to overflow. The best evidence is that, if the world continues to emit at its current rate for the next eight years, then it's likely that warming will pass the 1.5degC that we must stay below.
In this context, it's likely that Merkel will try to portray herself one final time as the tough leader forcing the EU into a consensus. Her problem, though, is that the German example is far from perfect. As I explained last week, Germans are sitting on higher per-capita historic emissions than any other country on earth apart from the US and UK.
The country has seen an impressive surge in renewable energy: in 2003, wind, solar and hydropower were responsible for 17GW of Germany's power. Last year, it was 120GW. But this has largely been on top of, rather than instead of, its coal consumption: in 2003, coal was responsible for 49GW. In 2020, that was 44GW. It's a bit like Germany has attempted to go on a diet, not by giving up burgers, but by also ordering a salad on the side: total energy production has almost doubled in that time.
And in recent years, German manufacturers have been actively outsourcing many of their emissions to the very countries that are now reluctant to cut them, with, for example, factories of the major German car companies a common sight--and a significant set of employers--across Hungary.
The German target to achieve net-carbon neutrality by 2045 is one of the best in the world, but it also isn't really enough: that's when scientists estimate that the world needs to get to net zero. But Europe's biggest economy has--like Britain and the US--used up more than its fair share of carbon wealth already, and if it keeps burning until the last minute, it creates no space for less developed countries to catch up.
The recent elections were the best ever for Germany's Green party, which got 15%, while polls earlier in the year showed the party doing even better and, for one brief moment, leading. The coalition negotiations are very likely to produce a government that includes both Greens and Social Democrats, the latter of which know that their final victory came from luring their historic voters back from the brink of voting Green. This government won't just lead Germany for the next four years. It will, in reality, be leading the EU into the decade in which a radical reduction of carbon emissions must happen.
If it succeeds in doing so, it will be because of the political pressure skillfully generated by a new generation of climate activists, who have refused to let their future be boiled away.
A "brutal lesson in geopolitics," is how the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel described the announcement of AUKUS, the new security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The deal is not just a major financial blow to France, whose contract to deliver 12 submarines to Australia for $A50 billion ($36 billion) was unceremoniously ditched in the process. Perhaps even more important was that US President Joe Biden chose to announce AUKUS in a manner that can only be interpreted as a deliberate humiliation of France and, by association, the rest of the European Union.
When any US president slaps them in the face to remind them who is boss, they have no choice but to turn the other cheek, because it is they who have decided to choose their current privileges at the expense of European independence.
It was not the first brutal lesson the US had taught the EU recently. When Donald Trump reneged on the deal that former President Barack Obama and the EU had jointly struck to end Iran's nuclear program, one of his reasons was to put Germany in its place. Hours after German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that EU corporations would ignore Trump's sanctions and continue to trade with Iran, German corporations made their own announcement: Unwilling to be cast out of the US market, and to miss out on Trump's corporate tax cuts, they would cease trading in Iran.
The two incidents served the purpose of preserving America's financial and geostrategic hegemony over the West. Both incidents inflamed European leaders enough for them to consider retaliation. Trump's threat of sanctions against EU-based corporations continuing to deal with Iran sparked discussions in the EU of corresponding sanctions on US companies. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron responded to Biden's AUKUS announcement with a move once reserved as a last resort just before declaring war: recalling France's ambassadors from Washington, DC, and Canberra.
Predictably, once their anger subsides, and their threats fizzle out, Europe's leaders soberly turn to addressing the root causes of their weakness vis-a-vis the US. But it is a charade that should fool no one.
After European companies acquiesced in Trump's sanctions on Iran, EU officials reasonably concluded that, as long as the US controls the payments system, Europe will be at America's mercy in any confrontation involving money. So, they decided that Europe needs a payments system that the US government cannot block. Similarly, after the AUKUS fiasco, the need for a cohesive European military came into sharp focus.
But, in both cases, creating the European institutions needed to challenge American hegemony would require Europe's leaders to make a move that they are loath to contemplate.
Consider the ambition to create a euro-dominated payments system that allows companies and states to trade independently of the US-dominated financial system. For such a system to work, it must be liquid, which means it must be able to attract other people's money--Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and certainly US money.
This in turn requires that non-Europeans holding loads of euros have a euro-dominated safe asset in which to invest their stash for a day or for a decade. In the dollar-denominated, US-dominated financial world, such an asset not only exists but increases daily in proportion to gargantuan US government borrowing. But in the EU, there is no equivalent to US Treasuries. German bunds may be as safe as houses, but there are not enough of them to support a euro-denominated competitor to the dollar-dominated international payment system.
Europe's officials know that creating a European equivalent of US Treasuries, the much discussed but never-realized eurobond, is a bridge too far. After all, creating the necessary volume of eurobonds would imply a large pan-European debt. That, in turn, demands a common treasury, which can be legitimized only by ditching the EU's intergovernmental architecture in favor of European elites' greatest nightmare: a democratic federation.
Indeed, during her 16 years in power, Germany's outgoing chancellor did not block the creation of eurobonds out of petulance or antipathy to a European safe asset. She did so because she had no interest in clashing with European elites' determination to stop the EU integration process well before anything resembling a democratic federation takes shape.
The same is true of military integration. Even the modest project of piecing together a five-thousand-strong European rapid deployment force can never be more than tokenism. Who will send these men and women to spill their blood in some faraway war? The French president? The German chancellor? The president of the European Commission?
And who will have the right, at the drop of a hat, to recall them if necessary? Without a sovereign parliament to back a federal government that makes these decisions, no European military worthy of the name can ever emerge.
European leaders get what they deserve. When any US president slaps them in the face to remind them who is boss, they have no choice but to turn the other cheek, because it is they who have decided to choose their current privileges at the expense of European independence. Every slap angers them enough to issue threats and recall ambassadors. But then they run up against their own hostility to what it would take to liberate Europe from American hegemony.
To prevent the type of humiliation to which Trump subjected Merkel, Europe needs a eurobond. To prevent humiliations like the one Biden has inflicted upon Macron, it needs a common military. But eurobonds and a common military require Europe's national ruling classes (particularly those in creditor countries) to give up their own exorbitant power; and to embrace, instead, the radical idea of transnational voting for a transnational federal government.
Their dilemma is clear: Turn the EU into a democratic federation, and thus lose the exorbitant power over Europe's citizens that they enjoy in today's nondemocratic EU, or submit to ritual flagellation by whoever resides in the White House. Behind the sound and fury of their periodic protests, Europe's leaders seem to have made their choice.
More than 140 Nobel laureates and former heads of state signed an open letter Tuesday urging the next German chancellor to throw their support behind a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, a step the nation's outgoing leader has steadfastly refused to take.
Addressed to Annalena Baerbock, Armin Laschet, and Olaf Scholz--the leading contenders in Germany's September 26 election--the letter stresses the urgency of ramping up vaccine production and distributing doses to low-income countries that have been denied the resources necessary to inoculate their populations, leaving billions of people vulnerable to the coronavirus and its dangerous variants.
"Intellectual property rules are today locking out people across the world from the benefits of lifesaving science."
--Joseph Stiglitz
"German publicly-funded science developed the world-class mRNA BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, which was a huge achievement. Yet vaccines are zero percent effective for those who cannot access them," reads the letter, which was signed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Malawi President Joyce Banda, and dozens of others.
"In low-income countries, less than two percent of adults are fully vaccinated," the letter continues. "The global supply falls far short of the levels needed to provide global vaccination coverage. The artificial restriction on manufacturing and supply is leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid-19 each day, and countless thousands of cases--a proportion of which will suffer long-term, adverse health impacts."
The letter, coordinated by the People's Vaccine Alliance, was published as the World Trade Organization's (WTO) TRIPS Council convened on Tuesday to continue negotiations over a temporary patent waiver first proposed last October by India and South Africa. The waiver aims to lift intellectual property barriers that are stopping qualified manufacturers around the world from producing generic vaccines for low-income nations.
Under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany has been one of the waiver's principal opponents, along with the U.K., Canada, Switzerland, and other rich countries that have swallowed up much of the global vaccine supply. More than 100 nations--including the United States--have endorsed the proposal, but its adoption would require unanimous support from WTO member countries.
Concerned about the waiver's potential impact on their bottom lines, pharmaceutical companies have lobbied aggressively against the proposal in Europe and elsewhere. Earlier this year, just days after the Biden administration announced its support for the patent waiver, Merkel echoed the pharmaceutical lobby's talking point that "the protection of intellectual property is a source of innovation and it must remain so in the future."
In their new letter, the former world leaders and Nobel laureates counter that temporarily suspending certain intellectual property protections "is essential in the fight against the pandemic," which has killed more than 4.6 million people and counting.
"Moreover, a waiver would still allow for vaccine originators to be fairly compensated whilst vaccines truly become a public good," they argue. "Let us be clear that this is an unparalleled moment: Germany can and must lead the charge to vaccinate the world."
Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University and the former chief economist of the World Bank, said in a statement Tuesday that the upcoming German election represents an opportunity for the country to potentially alter the course of the global pandemic by ending the pharmaceutical industry's monopoly control over vaccine production.
"The new chancellor of Germany will hold extraordinary power to turn the tide on this horrific pandemic and can be the world leader remembered for helping save millions of lives," said Stiglitz. "Intellectual property rules are today locking out people across the world from the benefits of lifesaving science--it is time for Germany to ensure the transfer of vaccine technologies and join the rest of the world in backing a temporary waiver at the World Trade Organization."
Read the full letter:
Dear Annalena Baerbock, Armin Laschet, and Olaf Scholz,
We, the undersigned former Heads of State and Government and Nobel Laureates, write to you in the conviction that Germany has a significant role to play in global efforts to bring the Covid-19 pandemic to an end. The impact of that would be of huge significance to people in Germany and around the world.
As candidates to be the next German Chancellor, responsibility for your country's leadership on this issue will fall on one of you.
German publicly-funded science developed the world-class mRNA BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine which was a huge achievement. Yet vaccines are zero per cent effective for those who cannot access them.
The fact that a few vaccine producers hold monopoly control over how much vaccine is made and where it is made has resulted in a serious shortage of doses. As a result, billions of people remain unvaccinated in countries without access.
In low-income countries, less than two per cent of adults are fully vaccinated. The global supply falls far short of the levels needed to provide global vaccination coverage. The artificial restriction on manufacturing and supply is leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths from COVID-19 each day, and countless thousands of cases--a proportion of which will suffer long term, adverse health impacts.
In light of this we are deeply concerned with Germany's continued opposition to a temporary waiver of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) intellectual property rules which thwart more rapid production of Covid-19 vaccines and access to technologies.
There are qualified manufacturers around the world who, with a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights and the necessary knowledge and technology transfer, could produce the billions of additional doses of safe and effective vaccines needed to fight the pandemic.
However, the position taken by Germany and some other countries at the WTO is undermining the will of the more than 100 countries which do support negotiations on a TRIPS waiver. South Africa and India have led the push for those negotiations, and they have been joined by others from across regions, including France and the United States.
We write to express our hope that, after its general election, Germany will change its position and will support negotiations on the proposed TRIPS waiver.
We do not advocate a suspension of intellectual property rules lightly, but we believe that it is essential in the fight against the pandemic. Moreover, a waiver would still allow for vaccine originators to be fairly compensated whilst vaccines truly become a public good.
While donating excess vaccines to developing countries is crucial, it is not in itself a sustainable solution--the vaccine problem is one of both distribution and supply. Covax aims to provide vaccines to cover nearly thirty per cent of populations in countries that it serves--and has been unable to obtain sufficient supply to meet even that modest goal. Its challenge is even more daunting as Germany and other high-income countries move to offer their citizens booster shots, while billions of people remain unvaccinated.
That is why developing countries being able to manufacture their own vaccines, and dramatically increase their supply, is vital. We need, more than ever, a people's vaccine.
If elected and chosen to lead the next German Government, we urge you to support a wide and comprehensive waiver of intellectual property rules on all Covid-19-related technologies at the WTO.
We also urge you to ensure that German pharmaceutical companies openly and rapidly share life-saving mRNA vaccine technology with qualified producers around the world, including by working with the World Health Organization Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and the mRNA hub in South Africa.
We urge you to make these the policies of any future coalition government.
Germany is in a unique and historic position today. Having helped create the most successful vaccine technology against Covid-19, by overcoming pharmaceutical monopolies and insisting that the technology be shared, it has the ability to help end this pandemic.
The experience that many of us share allows us to empathize with the realities of political office and the pressures you face. But let us be clear that this is an unparalleled moment: Germany can and must lead the charge to vaccinate the world.
The brief bilateral summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel ended Thursday without any commitment from the European leader to drop her opposition to a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, a result that public health campaigners dubbed a major failure as infections continue to surge across the globe.
"Tens of millions of lives and livelihoods worldwide are left in peril, including here, given that raging Covid outbreaks anywhere increase the chances for a vaccine-resistant strain emerging."
--Lori Wallach, Public Citizen
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, said in a statement that Biden's inability to move Merkel on the patent waiver "delivers a punishing blow to efforts to end the pandemic."
"People around the world dying for lack of vaccines were relying on Biden to get Merkel to stop blocking the waiver given that he promised that if elected president, he wouldn't allow Big Pharma monopolies to block global vaccine and treatment access," said Wallach. "Tens of millions of lives and livelihoods worldwide are left in peril, including here, given that raging Covid outbreaks anywhere increase the chances for a vaccine-resistant strain emerging. We urge the president to redouble his efforts to get the waiver enacted."
While Biden reportedly raised the patent waiver during his private meeting with Merkel on Thursday, it's unclear to what extent he pressed the German leader on the issue--and the president did not mention the proposal during a news conference following their discussion.
Merkel, who was also silent on the patent waiver during the media briefing, said that "we are convinced... that overcoming this pandemic is only possible if as many people as possible are vaccinated in our countries."
"We have to also support the rest of the world with vaccines. We work together with COVAX," the German leader said, referring to the World Health Organization-backed global vaccination initiative that has struggled to meet its goals due to supply shortages.
Experts and public health advocates have argued that the only way to ensure the speedy production and equitable distribution of at least 11 billion vaccine doses--the number believed to be necessary to end the pandemic worldwide--is to temporarily suspend intellectual property protections that are allowing major pharmaceutical companies to maintain a vice grip on vaccine formulas and key technology.
Activists amplified that message outside the White House and across the nation during Merkel's U.S. visit, lining up body bags in the nation's capital to symbolize the preventable deaths caused by the European leader's continued obstruction of the waiver proposal, which India and South Africa first introduced at the World Trade Organization (WTO) back in October.
Proponents argue that a suspension of certain intellectual property protections for the duration of the pandemic would help facilitate the production of generic vaccines, which could then be distributed to low-income nations that have struggled to obtain doses thanks in part to hoarding by wealthy countries.
"As long as Germany withholds its approval of the TRIPS waiver, it threatens the lives of millions of people around the world and our ability to crush the virus."
--Rep. Pramila Jayapal
According to Our World in Data, just 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose. Haiti--in the midst of a political crisis following the assassination of its president--had yet to administer a single vaccine dose as of Thursday, when 500,000 doses donated by the U.S government through COVAX arrived in the country.
Jean Gough, UNICEF's regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement that "thanks to this donation, hundreds of thousands of Haitians will receive their shots against Covid-19."
"Yet, despite the collective efforts to kickstart the vaccination campaign soon, most of the Haitian population is at risk of remaining unvaccinated due to the limited availability of doses currently in the country," Gough warned.
Biden garnered widespread applause after he voiced support for the temporary patent waiver in May, but the president has since come under fire for not doing enough to convince other world powers--including Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom--to follow suit. Because the WTO operates by consensus, a handful of rich countries have the power to block a proposal backed by more than 140 countries.
"This summit was a failure," Wallach said Thursday, "and we urge Biden to prioritize getting the WTO waiver enacted ASAP so more Covid vaccines and treatments can be produced worldwide."
With Germany and other rich countries stonewalling the patent waiver, the ultra-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is running rampant in undervaccinated regions of the world, including Africa, South America, and pockets of the United States. The World Health Organization said Thursday that Africa reported a million coronavirus cases in just the past month, the fastest surge of new infections on the continent thus far.
"As long as Germany withholds its approval of the TRIPS waiver, it threatens the lives of millions of people around the world and our ability to crush the virus," U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement Thursday, referring to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement.
"The pandemic isn't over until it's over everywhere," Jayapal added.
As U.S. President Joe Biden prepared to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Thursday's White House summit to discuss "ending the Covid-19 pandemic," the Congressional Progressive Caucus urged Merkel to end Germany's obstruction of a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, which public health advocates say would make possible the increased global production of lifesaving shots.
"After watching my family in India fight to survive the latest surge there, I feel personally how vital it is that the U.S. must do everything we can to ensure that no one else has to suffer from an artificial vaccine shortage in the fight against this virus."
--Rep. Pramila Jayapal
"Chancellor Merkel arrives in Washington, D.C. as the Delta variant is surging around the world and wealthier countries have administered 80% of vaccine doses, while low-income countries have been left with just 0.4% of them," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement.
"We hope that when President Biden meets with her Thursday, he will press the chancellor on why Germany is standing in the way of more than 130 nations accessing Covid-19 vaccines through an emergency waiver from the World Trade Organization," added Jayapal.
Oxfam estimated last month that at the current pace, it would take impoverished countries throughout the Global South until nearly 2080 to fully inoculate their populations, a manifestation of health injustice that progressives around the world have dubbed "vaccine apartheid."
The pandemic's official global death toll, meanwhile, surpassed four million last week, including close to three million since October, when India and South Africa first introduced the popular motion to suspend the WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement for the duration of the pandemic.
Although Biden received praise for endorsing the TRIPS waiver in May following months of U.S. opposition, he has done little since then to publicly pressure Washington's allies to follow suit, prompting criticism from advocacy groups and experts.
A handful of countries--led by Germany and several other rich members of the European Union--continues to side with Big Pharma by resisting calls to drop patent protections for Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. Because the WTO operates by consensus, the intransigence of just one nation is enough to thwart the will of the vast majority.
"Our caucus," said Jayapal, "has prioritized global vaccine equity since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, and along with [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat] supported the Biden administration's efforts to ensure quick and equitable global vaccine production and treatment access."
For months, hundreds of civil society groups, progressive U.S. lawmakers, Nobel laureates, and medical ethicists have made the case that ending the pandemic requires suspending coronavirus-related intellectual property barriers. Pharmaceutical corporations' monopolistic control over publicly funded knowledge and technology, progressives argue, is currently inhibiting the mass production of generic vaccines as well as diagnostic and therapeutic tools, resulting in an artificially low supply and inequitable allocation of doses that epidemiologists have warned will prolong suffering worldwide.
"As long as Germany withholds its approval of the TRIPS waiver," Jayapal noted, "it threatens the lives of millions of people around the world and our ability to crush the virus."
Jayapal's comments came amid a weeklong pressure campaign organized by a coalition of global justice groups. From floating banners calling for universal vaccine access and staging a "die-in" protest in front of the White House, to marching through New York City prior to blockading the street in front of Pfizer's headquarters, along with many other direct actions, activists around the country implored Merkel before and during her visit to support the TRIPS waiver to facilitate greater worldwide manufacturing of sorely needed doses.
During an online panel on vaccine equity convened by Public Citizen, health policy experts and social justice advocates argued Wednesday that if Biden cannot persuade Merkel to drop Germany's opposition to the TRIPS waiver, Thursday's summit between the two elected officials "will be an epic moral failure," as Father Charlie Chilufya, director of Justice and Ecology at the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar, put it.
Jayapal, for her part, stressed that "the pandemic isn't over until it's over everywhere."
"After watching my family in India fight to survive the latest surge there, I feel personally how vital it is that the U.S. must do everything we can to ensure that no one else has to suffer from an artificial vaccine shortage in the fight against this virus--both in pushing to ensure the TRIPS waiver is implemented, and by investing $35 billion into America's production of vaccines that can quickly assist countries around the world in getting vaccinated," she said.
"President Biden has been clear and strategic in rebuilding America's relationships with world leaders, and once again ensuring that the United States reestablishes our leadership on the world stage," Jayapal added. "We hope that during this visit, the president will apply his diplomatic and leadership skills to ensuring Germany supports the TRIPS waiver so that we can all engage in the lifesaving work of fighting this global pandemic."
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday for a White House summit to discuss "ending the Covid-19 pandemic," she was greeted outside by a giant puppet of herself alongside dozens of body bags, symbolizing the victims of Germany's ongoing obstruction of a proposed patent waiver that public health advocates say would boost the global production of sorely needed vaccines.
"Every day Chancellor Merkel delays global action on Covid vaccines costs thousands of lives and increases the chances of a viral mutation that can evade current vaccines and start the pandemic all over for everyone."
--Arthur Stamoulis, Citizens Trade Campaign
Although more than 140 nations have backed a popular motion at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement for the duration of the pandemic, Germany remains opposed to the measure, even as the Delta variant ravages impoverished countries throughout the Global South--made highly vulnerable by the starkly unequal distribution of life-saving shots.
"While Americans and Western Europeans increasingly have widespread access to Covid vaccination, huge numbers of people around the world won't have access to a vaccine for years unless global production is dramatically increased," Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), said in a statement. CTC is part of a coalition of progressive advocacy groups--which also includes Justice is Global, Health GAP, and others--that helped organize Thursday's "die-in" protest in Washington, D.C. along with other actions this week.
More than 3.5 billion doses have been administered globally, but according to Our World in Data, a mere 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. Meanwhile, even though billions of people worldwide have yet to receive a single dose, Pfizer this week sought U.S. authorization for booster shots.
Oxfam estimated last month that at the current pace, it would take impoverished nations until nearly 2080 to fully inoculate their populations, a manifestation of global health injustice that progressives around the world have dubbed "vaccine apartheid." The pandemic's official global death toll, meanwhile, surpassed four million last week, including close to three million since India and South Africa first proposed the TRIPS waiver last October.
Emphasizing that "vaccine apartheid kills," Health GAP said Merkel's continued obstruction of the TRIPS waiver "means more people will die when they could have been saved if they had access to life-saving vaccines."
Stamoulis noted that "every day Chancellor Merkel delays global action on Covid vaccines costs thousands of lives and increases the chances of a viral mutation that can evade current vaccines and start the pandemic all over for everyone."
"Merkel is refusing to support the TRIPS waiver... to shield the powerful at the expense of ending the nightmare of Covid-19, and this leaves blood on her hands."
--Ben Levinson, Justice is Global
Although Biden received praise for endorsing the TRIPS waiver in May following months of U.S. opposition, he has done little since then to publicly pressure Washington's allies to follow suit, prompting criticism from advocacy groups and experts.
A handful of countries--led by Germany and several other rich members of the European Union--continues to side with Big Pharma by resisting calls to drop patent protections for Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. Because the WTO operates by consensus, the intransigence of just one nation is enough to thwart the will of the vast majority.
Ben Levinson, deputy director of Justice is Global, said Thursday that "Merkel is refusing to support the TRIPS waiver... to shield the powerful at the expense of ending the nightmare of Covid-19, and this leaves blood on her hands."
At demonstrations around the country this week, activists continued to push for a temporary waiver of coronavirus-related intellectual property barriers. Progressives have argued for months that Big Pharma's monopolistic control over publicly funded knowledge and technology is currently inhibiting the mass production of generic vaccines as well as diagnostic and therapeutic tools, resulting in an artificially low supply and inequitable allocation of doses that threatens to prolong suffering worldwide.
Prior to her White House visit, Merkel traveled to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she received an honorary degree. As she arrived, protesters chanted: "Free the vaccine!"
Echoing arguments made Wednesday during Public Citizen's panel on vaccine equity, Stamoulis stressed that "the Merkel-Biden meeting will not be a success unless Germany agrees to support the TRIPS waiver and help end the pandemic."
"With thousands of people still dying of Covid every day due to lack of access to vaccines and treatments, Merkel's visit with President Biden Thursday presents a literal life-or-death opportunity to change course and do the right thing for humanity," said Stamoulis.
"Germany continuing to prioritize pharmaceutical company profits over saving as many lives as possible and ending this pandemic," he added, "would be a horrific stain on Chancellor Merkel's legacy as a world leader."
President Joe Biden's White House summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday will be an epic moral failure unless it ends Germany's blockage of an emergency World Trade Organization (WTO) waiver to facilitate greater production of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments necessary to save millions of lives.
As the United States begins to return to normal thanks to widespread COVID-19 vaccination, only 0.3% of people in low-income countries have had their first shot. Only seven out of 54 African nations are on track to immunize even 10% of their people by September. As a result, the Delta variant is causing terrifying new waves of preventable death and sickness throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
"President Biden must move Chancellor Merkel and Germany, to have compassion, to have kindness and to prioritize human life. We believe he can do it."
Most Americans are unaware of this far more brutal COVID wave now wracking African countries from Kenya and Uganda to Zambia and Malawi, where most people have no protection or treatment. Germany's recent apology for its genocidal colonialism in Namibia, another hard-hit nation, makes it even more horrifying that Chancellor Merkel is the main obstacle to temporarily suspending pharmaceutical corporations' intellectual property monopoly controls so vaccine supplies can be scaled up and lives saved.
Vaccines are essential. In most of the developing world, we can't afford lockdowns. Most people obtain income in the informal sector. They don't have savings. If there are lockdown measures, it means people have no income to buy food or pay for water or electricity. Then they lose their housing. If people lock down, they will die. And if they do not, without vaccines, they will die.
This health crisis is now also a global justice crisis--a failure of humanity. Last week, COVAX, the agency distributing vaccines to poor countries, informed us that there are simply no vaccines. Maybe we can get a little bit in September.
Yet, the world could be producing vaccines far faster if a rich country, like Germany, had not put pharmaceutical industry interests first, at the expense of human life, and blocked the WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) waiver.
With Germany pushing the European Union to blocking this initiative by more than 130 nations' to temporarily suspend Big Pharma monopolies so more vaccines can be made, vaccine factories are lying idle around the world, including in Africa.
If you were here, to see what is happening--lives lost, livelihoods falling apart--you wouldn't understand why anybody with any little bit of reason and compassion would block a waiver of monopoly powers that protect the profits of a few while letting many people die. Yet this is what Germany is doing.
I would like to recall how Angela Merkel, out of her compassion, responded to the refugee crisis a couple of years ago. We want her to go on to repeat such an act of humanity.
President Biden has the leverage to fix this. He can ask Angela Merkel to look toward those who are suffering in Africa, Latin America and in Asia, and join him in preventing unnecessary deaths.
"There is money to produce enough vaccines to protect everyone to ensure that no country must lock down, if only Germany stops prioritizing the profits of the pharmaceutical companies."
It's something that can be changed. Governments funded decades of research behind the medical miracles of the vaccines. There is money to produce enough vaccines to protect everyone to ensure that no country must lock down, if only Germany stops prioritizing the profits of the pharmaceutical companies.
America provided leadership by supporting the COVID medicine waiver and leading other rich countries to join the U.S. Now, President Biden must move Chancellor Merkel and Germany, to have compassion, to have kindness and to prioritize human life. We believe he can do it.
Indeed, unlocking Germany's blockage of the WTO TRIPS waiver is the most important thing that President Biden can achieve in his Merkel summit, because of the impact that freeing the vaccine could have on millions of people globally.
President Biden's faith is a central part of his commitment to social justice. Our Catholic social teaching prioritizes over all else respect for the dignity of the human person. And I would like to appeal to my fellow Catholic, I would like to appeal to the president of America, to continue doing as he is doing, but even do more: Get Germany to do what should be done now, support the waiver, so that more medicines may be produced and may be availed to everyone, every country, and everywhere.
This is President Biden's moment for true global leadership.
Ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's White House visit, global justice campaigners marched to the German Consulate and Pfizer's headquarters in Manhattan on Wednesday to demand that Germany and Big Pharma stop blocking a proposed patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines, which public health advocates say would facilitate greater worldwide manufacturing of sorely needed doses.
"The pandemic can only be defeated globally. It requires global effort and global solidarity. No one is safe until everyone is safe."
--Marian Lieser, Oxfam Germany
As the Delta variant ravages impoverished countries throughout the Global South--made highly vulnerable by the starkly unequal distribution of life-saving shots--hundreds of demonstrators, carrying signs with messages like "Merkel's delay could kill us all" and "Pharma greed could kill us all," hit the streets of New York City to denounce pharmaceutical corporations and Germany for their continued obstruction of a popular motion at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily waive the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement.
Although well over 100 countries have backed the TRIPS waiver proposal, Germany remains opposed to the measure.
"Germany is increasingly isolated with its stance blocking the TRIPS waiver, and is hindering global containment of the pandemic," Barbara Gerold-Wolke, acting general director for Doctors Without Borders in Germany, said in a statement.
For months, hundreds of civil society groups, progressive U.S. lawmakers, Nobel laureates, and medical ethicists have made the case that ending the pandemic requires suspending the coronavirus-related intellectual property (IP) barriers currently inhibiting the global production of generic vaccines as well as diagnostic and therapeutic tools. One of the key factors driving the inequitable allocation of vaccines, progressives argue, is an artificially scarce supply of doses caused in large part by Big Pharma's monopolistic control over vaccine formulas and relevant technology.
During Wednesday's march, which came just a week after the pandemic's official global death toll surpassed four million, protesters could be heard chanting: "How many more have to die? Break the patents now, Merkel!" Later on, the crowd aimed its denunciations of deadly profiteering at Pfizer.
Wednesday's action in New York, one of many taking place across the U.S. this week, was organized by a coalition of progressive advocacy groups, including Justice is Global, Health GAP, and several others. In an act of civil disobedience, protesters eventually risked arrest to blockade the street outside Pfizer's headquarters.
First introduced last October by India and South Africa, the proposal to suspend Big Pharma's coronavirus-related IP for the duration of the pandemic has garnered the support of more than 140 WTO member nations, according to Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. That includes the United States, which threw its support behind the TRIPS waiver in May following months of opposition.
However, a handful of countries--led by Germany and several other rich members of the European Union--continues to resist calls to drop patent protections for Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, pharmaceutical corporations that are profiting immensely from their monopolization of publicly funded knowledge and technology have been at the forefront of opposition to the TRIPS waiver. Because the WTO operates by consensus, the intransigence of just one nation is enough to thwart the will of the vast majority.
At the same time that activists marched through New York, health policy experts and social justice advocates argued during an online panel convened by Public Citizen that if U.S. President Joe Biden cannot persuade Merkel to drop Germany's opposition to the TRIPS waiver, Thursday's summit between the two elected officials will be a failure.
"We are way overdue for a temporary waiver to TRIPS," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a consistent advocate for vaccine equity, who recently led a group of House Democrats in requesting a meeting with Merkel this week. "While Germany dithers at the WTO, repeating the same talking points, Pfizer is profiting from human suffering."
"Everyone is at risk everywhere as long as the virus is active anywhere," she added. "We cannot afford any more deaths at the hands of vaccine nationalism and pharma monopolies. We need shots in arms and we need them now."
More than 3.5 billion doses have been administered globally, but according to Our World in Data, a mere 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. Meanwhile, even though billions of people worldwide have yet to receive a single dose, Pfizer this week sought U.S. authorization for booster shots.
Oxfam estimated last month that at the current pace, it would take impoverished nations until nearly 2080 to fully inoculate their populations, a manifestation of global health injustice that progressives around the world have dubbed "vaccine apartheid."
Epidemiologists have long warned that failing to inoculate a sufficient percentage of the world's population will prolong the pandemic, threatening millions of additional lives and livelihoods as the virus is given more time to mutate into potentially vaccine-resistant variants.
"We think that President Biden has the leverage and can ask Angela Merkel to look toward those who are suffering in Africa, Latin America, and in Asia, and join him in preventing unnecessary deaths by supporting the Covid medicine waiver, and leading other rich countries to join the U.S."
--Father Charlie Chilufya, Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar
Although Biden received praise for endorsing the TRIPS waiver in May, he has done little since then to publicly pressure U.S. allies to follow suit, prompting criticism from advocacy groups and experts.
Father Charlie Chilufya, director of Justice and Ecology at the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar, said during Wednesday's panel that "this is President Biden's moment for true global leadership."
The meeting with Merkel, he said, "will be an epic moral failure unless it ends Germany's blockage of an emergency WTO waiver to facilitate production of more Covid-19 vaccines and treatments needed to save millions of lives."
"This health crisis is now also a global justice crisis, a failure of humanity," Chilufya continued. "We think that President Biden has the leverage and can ask Angela Merkel to look toward those who are suffering in Africa, Latin America, and in Asia, and join him in preventing unnecessary deaths by supporting the Covid medicine waiver, and leading other rich countries to join the U.S."
"America has already started showing leadership," said Chilufya, who welcomed the Biden administration's "promise of half a billion doses that will be coming to poor countries." However, given that "only seven out of 54 African countries are on track to immunize 10% of their population by September," Chilufya stressed that Biden "can do a lot more."
Emphasizing that "lives are being lost needlessly," Chilufya urged Biden to "move Merkel and Germany, to have compassion, to have kindness, and to prioritize human life and not profits."
Dr. Joia Mukherjee, medical director at Partners in Health, said that "those of us on the frontlines of providing care in the Global South are gutted by this series of decisions," referring to ongoing opposition to the TRIPS waiver.
"We are facing the worst existential crisis of the 21st century," said Mukherjee. "And what we see is a lack of international cooperation, and we know it's the very international cooperation that we will need to combat the other huge looming existential crisis of climate change. And what this is showing us is that we get a huge F on our report card of collaboration."
"Is it acceptable," she asked, "that people in the Global South will die and that we just accept that?"
"The answer, I am sad to say--particularly being promoted by Germany at this moment--is that yes, that is acceptable," she said. "Why? Because we want to protect the profits of a company."
According to Mukherjee, "We need a war-time approach that will be collaborative in nature and that will assume that it is in all our best interests" to achieve universal access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Marian Lieser, the executive director of Oxfam Germany, pointed out that "rich countries, including Germany, have secured two-thirds of the available vaccine doses for themselves, although they account for only 16% of the world's population."
Condemning such hoarding, she said that is "why it's so appalling that Germany continues to be a major blocker of the sharing of... intellectual property, which could help maximize production and save lives."
"The pandemic can only be defeated globally," Lieser added. "It requires global effort and global solidarity. No one is safe until everyone is safe."
With the ultra-contagious Delta variant fueling devastating waves of coronavirus infections across the globe, a group of House Democrats is demanding a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss her ongoing "blockade" of a temporary patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines--a popular proposal aimed at quickly boosting supply of the life-saving shots.
"Thanks to IP barriers, it is the U.S. and German firms that have the only approved Covid-19 mRNA vaccines that hold the monopoly power to decide if this scale-up will occur."
--Letter
"We are troubled by the European Union's continuing opposition to this initiative, which we understand is a position led by Germany within the E.U.," nine House Democrats wrote in a letter (pdf) late Monday to Emily Haber, Germany's ambassador to the United States.
The letter comes just days before Merkel is set to arrive in the United States for a July 15 White House visit, during which the German leader and U.S. President Joe Biden are expected to discuss a range of pressing issues, including the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis.
In their letter, the group of House Democrats led by Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois noted that the U.S. and "almost every other" member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) supports the proposed intellectual property waiver, which South Africa and India first introduced in October.
"Scaling up much greater production of mRNA vaccines is necessary to save millions of lives and livelihoods," the lawmakers wrote. "Thanks to IP barriers, it is the U.S. and German firms that have the only approved Covid-19 mRNA vaccines that hold the monopoly power to decide if this scale-up will occur."
"Chancellor Merkel joining President Biden in supporting the waiver would lock in her legacy worldwide and that of Germany as heroes taking extraordinary efforts to protect people worldwide from the worst health threat in 100 years," they continued. "Chancellor Merkel's failure to do so, and thus putting industry IP monopolies as a priority over people, will also be understood globally if that is the outcome."
Biden won widespread applause after he endorsed the patent waiver in May, but little progress has been made toward a final agreement at the WTO as Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and a handful of other wealthy countries continue to stonewall the proposal. In the weeks since he announced his support for the waiver, Biden has done little to publicly pressure U.S. allies to follow suit, prompting criticism from advocacy groups and experts.
The rapid spread of the Delta variant has increased pressure on the leaders of rich nations to end their obstruction of the waiver, which would suspend intellectual property barriers that are preventing manufacturers around the world from producing generic vaccines for developing countries.
In the absence of a patent waiver, low-income nations are struggling to get their vaccination drives off the ground due to the artificially scarce supply of doses and other factors, including pharmaceutical companies' refusal to share essential manufacturing technology that was developed with public funding. Just 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose, according to the latest figures from Our World in Data.
Research published last week in the journal Nature found that just one dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine "barely inhibited" the Delta variant, which is ripping through undervaccinated regions of the world such as Africa and South America. The strain has also been detected in all 50 states of the U.S., and it is hammering pockets of the nation with low vaccination rates.
"We are experiencing a worsening public health emergency that further threatens lives, livelihoods, and a sound global economic recovery," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned Monday. "It is definitely worse in places that have very few vaccines, but the pandemic is not over, anywhere."
Public health campaigners across the U.S. are planning to greet Merkel with nationwide protests demanding that she end her opposition to the patent waiver and join global efforts to break the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold on vaccine production.
"Covid-19 is raging through the many nations with limited vaccine access. Poor nations' access may lag until 2024, destroying lives and livelihoods and increasing chances a vaccine-resistant variant develops," said consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, one of the organizations behind the protests.
"Merkel's singular role as the obstacle has made the summit a critical test of whether President Joe Biden can deliver on his goal of a TRIPS waiver unlocking global vaccine and treatment access--or his initiative to save tens of millions of live could fail despite his historic support, as well as Merkel's chance to cement her legacy as a humanitarian, not a Big Pharma shill," the group added.
When the Biden Administration announced it would no longer oppose suspension of Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) standards regarding production of COVID vaccines and therapies, there was joy in the world health lobby and anguish in the big pharma camp. Understandable as these reactions were there are good reasons to curb the emotions on both sides. Just how concerned big Pharma was became clear by their willingness to deploy even contradictory arguments in their own behalf. Lobbyists maintained on the one hand that a significant increase in world wide production was beyond the capacity and expertise of most other producers even as they also claimed that greater production and lower prices would undermine incentives to develop new vaccines.
Nonetheless the next step is to turn Madison on his head and build a grass roots coalition on behalf of egalitarian international response to global health emergencies.
The concern about the lack of expertise and manufacturing capacity seems to have received the most attention. I would maintain that the greatest lack in the global South is money, in large part a consequence technology hording and profits made from its citizens. One major source of these profits has been IP standards themselves. The so called free trade agreements have much less to do about conventional tariff barriers than about requiring member states to accept patent and copyright standards that serve the interests of elites in the advanced economies. The claim of economies too underdeveloped to advance their own health is part of a neocolonial narrative that serves primarily to keep these nations in their place.
Joseph Stiglitz and Lori Wallach provide a strong counter to this narrative: "The argument that developing countries lack the skills to manufacture Covid vaccines based on new technologies is bogus. When US and European vaccine makers have agreed to partnerships with foreign producers, like the Serum Institute of India (the world's largest vaccine producer) and Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa, these organizations have had no notable manufacturing problems. There are many more firms and organizations around the world with the same potential to help boost the vaccine supply; they just need access to the technology and know-how."
The greater difficulty in attempting to suspend TRIPS standards may lie in the unanimity requirement. Whether by accident or design the requirement that suspension of the rules needs unanimous endorsement serves to protect the status quo. In Federalist 10 James Madison famously argued that a large republic would embrace so many kinds of economic, cultural, and political actors that it would be hard to fashion a radical anti property coalition. Though Madison did not name the form of property most on his mind, it is hard today not to ask who profits from the status quo. Trade and drug development policies and practices are well established, and the unanimity rule makes it hard to overturn them. In the current international political economy Germany's Angela Merkel may serve as the defender of big pharma's monopoly profits. Asked about her position on an IP waiver she voiced the standard industry talking point about the need to preserve patents as incentives for further research" " The German leader's comments sent shares of BioNTech--Pfizer's Germany-based vaccine partner and a beneficiary of massive public funding--soaring to session highs on Thursday, an indication that investors believe Merkel's public comments against the temporary waiver strike a significant blow to the proposal's chances of approval at the WTO."(Hiltz)
A TRIPS suspension may only be a first step, but it is an important one. It puts in play questions of who really makes and who profits from these miraculous vaccines. Note to Mrs Merkel: (LA Times columnist Michael Hiltz) federally funded basic and applied research at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department and academic labs created the foundation for the mRNA technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. In fact, almost no drugs reach market in the U.S. without such funding." Furthermore the science she most admires is often impeded by the walls of secrecy the patent system encourages.
Nonetheless the next step is to turn Madison on his head and build a grass roots coalition on behalf of egalitarian international response to global health emergencies. Such an effort might begin by reminding Germans that current practice and priorities reward German giant pharma far more than the average German citizen. Beyond this critical point we should emphasize the role government- funded research and development and a science more interested in discovery than profits has played in these miraculous vaccines.