“We support all efforts to achieve transparency and know the truth,” European Council President Charles Michel said at a press conference ahead of the G7 summit in the UK starting tomorrow, where European leaders will have their first meeting with the President. Will get opportunity. United States, Joe Biden.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the same press conference, “It is extremely important that we know the origins of COVID-19 to ensure that this does not happen again.”
Doubts about the true origins of the virus have risen in recent weeks after Biden gave US intelligence services 90 days to determine whether it may have accidentally emerged from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
This thesis, initially defended by his predecessor, Donald Trump, was rejected by researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO), who went to Wuhan to try to find out how the pandemic originated and how the Chinese also by the government.
The WHO mission, however, did not reach a conclusive result, other than the fact that the virus jumped from an animal to humans, and the report raised doubts because of Beijing’s pressure on researchers.
“There is a wide variety of different options that are being investigated right now and it is important that we have the same picture of the onset of the pandemic,” von der Leyen told TODAY.
“For this reason, investigation teams need real access to information,” he said.
Tuning in with Washington.
With this demand, the EU has shown itself to be in line with the current US administration, with which it intends to strengthen transatlantic ties after four years under Trump.
“It is good that the United States is back”, observed von der Leyen, who assured that “we look forward to having this G7 again”, with countries “that share similar values. , who share common interests and a common vision of the “world”.
“With the return of the United States to the international scene, we expect the G7 to support effective actions to strengthen multilateralism,” the President of the European Commission said.
In this regard, Michel stated that “the G7 (…) will reaffirm our belief in open societies, multilateralism and democratic values” and reaffirmed that the main economies in the world – the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, France , Italy and Japan – will also discuss their ties with Russia, which they expelled from the group in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.
“We share similar views on Russia’s disruptive actions,” Michel said.
Patent
However, Brussels and Washington disagree that patent liberalization is the best way to speed up vaccination around the world.
“Patent liberalization may sound nice, but it’s not a panacea,” Mitchell said, referring to Biden’s proposal, which has yet to be finalized.
The European Union is committed to the voluntary transfer of patents and, if pharmaceutical companies refuse to do so, are forced to sell them at affordable prices in order to receive a remuneration that allows them to continue their research. encourages.
corporate tax.
The president of the European Council also said that one of the other points of the G7 would be “international taxation”, when the group’s finance ministers agreed on a 15% minimum corporate tax for large multinationals.
G7 leaders must ratify the agreement now that the European Union seeks to take advantage of efforts to reach a global agreement in both the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the G20.
In a meeting to which India, South Africa and South Korea will be invited, the G7 leaders will also address relations with China and the situation in Belarus.
