Joe who? Greece’s PM claims the patent for “vaccines patent waiver”

It may seems hard to believe but it is true: The decision of US President Joe Biden and his administration to support a temporary waiver on patents and other intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines triggered a major political dispute in …Greece. The conservative government to claim that it was first the Greek Prime Minister who proposed and supported the idea for the vaccines patent waiver.

NEW: The Biden administration announced that it supports a temporary waiver on patents and other intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. https://t.co/zaAAqmRtSq

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) May 5, 2021

The proposal for the use of patents as a global good was first made by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – in support of a proposal by Elias Mossialos [professor at  ]- and published in the [German] “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” newspaper on April 6, 2020, government sources told state-run news agency amna on Thursday in all seriousness.

.@PrimeministerGR Mitsotakis first proposed that #vaccines be a 'global good' in April 2020, gov't sources note#patents #CovidVaccine #COVID19Vaccines https://t.co/pkTCDCRNoc

— ANA-MPA news (@amna_newseng) May 6, 2021

Also state minister and the PM’s close aide Giorgos Gerapetritis reiterated the patent narrative claim speaking to ΑΝΤ1 ΤV this morning.

A tiny problem is only that in his FAZ interview, Mitsotakis proposed “a common European market“, for which the European Union would buy the patents for the vaccines and the Covid-19 tests.

That’s quite different from Biden’s proposal….

Anyway, the political dispute today between ruling New Democracy and major opposition SYRIZA broke out when the latter recalled that when ex PM Alexis Tsipras proposed “vaccines patent waiver” in Greek Parliament beginning of January 2021, the neo-liberal PM mocked him.

Mitsotakis described Tsipras’ proposal as “funny fireworks that show he had no idea about how the international research and business environment works.” He told Tsipras ” Do you want us to nationalize the pharma companies with a single legislation?”

Τι έλεγε ο Μητσοτάκης για τις πατέντες των εμβολίων;
🔴 «Γιατί δεν παίρνετε», λέει, «τις πατέντες των εμβολίων ώστε να παράγονται εδώ από ελληνικές εταιρείες»;
Πάλι καλά που δε μας ζητήσατε να κρατικοποιηθεί η Pfizer και η AstraZeneca με ένα νόμο και με ένα άρθρο. pic.twitter.com/ouyT0weeeW

— ʍքǟȶɦǟֆ 💊 (@GiannisMpathas) May 5, 2021

Ιn a statement issued on Thursday, SYRIZA recalled that “patent waiver” proposal was tabled by MEPs and MPs at both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, and was raised during a phone call between SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras and the head of the World Health Organization Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. It also pointed out that “the proposal was finally officially adopted by the Council of Europe, the WHO and now the US government.”

The statement added “It would be better if the government and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, instead of making fools of themselves, were to find the courage, even at this late stage, to admit their mistake and even now submit an official proposal to the European Commission for the lifting of vaccine patents.”

Under the pressure of the times, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was quicker than the Greek PM and announced today:

Our priority is to ramp up production to achieve global vaccination.

At the same time we are open to discuss any other effective and pragmatic solution.

In this context we are ready to assess how the US proposal could help achieve that objective.

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) May 6, 2021

BTW: SYRIZA MEP Petros Kokkalis posted that New Democracy MEPs voted against the proposal by the Left in European Parliament for the patent waiver. That was 8 days ago.

ΠΡΙΝ ΑΠΟ 8 ΗΜΕΡΕΣ οι 7 ευρωβουλευτές της ΝΔ ΚΑΤΑΨΗΦΙΣΑΝ την πρόταση της Αριστεράς για την άρση προστασίας των πατεντών. Αυτονομήθηκαν, άκουσαν τον @kmitsotakis, ή απλά νοσταλγούν τον κ.Τραμπ; Η αριστεία ως τελευταία οπισθοφυλακή του νεοφιλελευθερισμού στην Ευρώπη. #Πατεντα_Τσιπρα pic.twitter.com/b7rOgfGe3R

— Petros Kokkalis (@PetrosKokkalis) May 6, 2021

PS In this sense “Good night and Good Luck.” As a wise man said recently: “As a child, I went to a circus; I never imagined I’d one day live in one.”