Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz calls on new German Chancellor to support TRIPS Waiver

December 16, 2021: Nobel Laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz, has called on the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to support a proposal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to lift intellectual property patents on COVID19 vaccines.

Writing in The Guardian, Stiglitz says that a change in Germany’s position on the TRIPS waiver would show leadership in the European Union and send a strong signal to the world that more needs to e done to ensure ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’:

“What is needed is for Germany to agree to a temporary exemption from the World Trade Organization’s intellectual property rules. These currently stifle the worldwide production of Covid-19 vaccines and antiviral treatments. If this barrier were removed, more vaccine doses could be produced in, and for, developing countries. That is exactly what the world needs, as the emergence of the Omicron variant is proving, all over again.”