On World Health Day, The European Left want to reaffirm his support to the European citizens’ initiative ‘no profit on pandemic’, a crucial campaign for safe access to treatments and vaccines for everyone in Europe. The right to healthcare can only be won through the wider effort to build a more democratic Europe, with a healthcare system run in the interests of people, not big pharma.
Please find here the EL President declaration ahead of the 2021 World Health Day
Please find here the link to the EL Public Services Working Group’ statement, which contains the proposal to set up a public Center for medical drugs in Europe and around the world
This campaign is in line with the radical turnaround in the healthcare system that the European left has been calling since the outbreak of this pandemic, namely the creation of a European Health Fund funded by the ECB. Through our campaign “Protect our future” the EL want to propose an alternative model for this Europe: it’s time to break with the past, abandoning austerity and all the policies that obstruct and prevent a social Europe!
Press releases and profit forecasts will not deliver vaccines to ordinary Europeans. Faced with the climbing death toll from covid-19, governments must lift intellectual property rights to increase production and save lives.
Access to vaccines and treatments must be guaranteed for all, in Europe and around the world. This is only possible by lifting intellectual property restrictions to massively ramp up production. Such a move would represent a radical break with the neoliberal logic which has thus far failed to provide solutions to the social and health crises.
The European Commission has failed in its strategy to ensure a fair and efficient distribution of vaccines. The commission must be held accountable for the drop in production and supply. But this is impossible when minimum levels of transparency are not being met. Instead, they have chosen to protect the profits of pharmaceutical corporations and to not reveal key sections of contracts with vaccine suppliers to public scrutiny.
The mantra of ‘market-led solutions’ that has dominated policy-making since 2008 has left Europeans open to the blackmail of big pharma. Effective vaccines against covid-19 would never have been possible without massive public investment in research, both before and during the pandemic.
A collective threat requires a collective response, not private profits!
