Minutes - TRIPS Council - View details of the intervention/statement

Ambassador Yonov Agah (Nigeria)
European Union
Adoption of the agenda
10. The representative of the European Communities said that his delegation was surprised by the arguments put forward to oppose a discussion which was extremely pertinent to the work of the Council. Article 68 of the TRIPS Agreement clearly stated that the Council should monitor the operation of the Agreement and in particular Members compliance with their obligations, so that the issue in question was squarely within the mandate of the Council. Furthermore, no Member had the intention to erode Members' rights to chose the appropriate means of implementing the Agreement under its Article 1.1. It should, however, be clear that the freedom to choose the appropriate means of implementation did not amount to a freedom whether or not to apply the Agreement at all. Finally, in response to the argument that there were other important topics like transfer of technology that should rather be discussed, he said that these topics were on the agenda and that if any Members wanted to present documents on these topics his delegation would be ready to examine them. His delegation supported the Swiss statement and agreed that Members should not start censoring each other. Every Member had topics on the agenda that it preferred to others, but his delegation had never tried to prevent anybody from putting relevant items on the agenda. His delegation was ready to examine all the topics that had been raised but would insist that each delegation had the right to put relevant items on the agenda of the Council.
IP/C/M/54