Trade agreements and access to drugs in Peru

Abstract

Through Free Trade Agreements, the economies of the United States of America (USA) and the European Union (EU) have been achieving a higher standard of protection of the intellectual property rights. This increases unduly the monopolist rights of the industry, restricting competition and limiting the access of new generic drugs. Peru has not been the exception to this process, subscribing a free trade agreement with the USA called Agreement of Commercial Promotion (APC) that involved the chapter of intellectual property, and in the same line, is now negotiating a second commercial agreement with the EU. In both cases, the presented proposals have been harmful for drug access, expressed in the clauses of the Aspects of Intellectual Property Related to the Commerce (ADPIC Plus). For some experts, there are certain complementarities between the goals of USA and those of the EU, while the first gets to increase the substantive standards such as the protection of testing data (achieved in the APC), the EU would strengthen the monitoring, thus ensuring the application of the obligations that have been acquired. This would result in a climbing of the pharmaceutical industry due to the widening of the intellectual property protection rights. The Peruvian State must guarantee the access to drugs through public policies that promote competition, ensuring the introduction of generics to the market. For this, it is necessary to prevent new obligations that attempt against access to these, by refusing new mechanisms of protection of the intellectual property rights in the free trade agreements.