Yesterday the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy was supposed to meet representatives of several French NGOs involved in the domain of development. Unfortunately this eagerly awaited event was cancelled by the Elysée Palace in favour of a meeting between the president and the French football player Thierry Henri.

On the eve of the G8 summit in Canada, these NGOs would have liked to remind the president that he must live up to the expectations of such a summit, especially on the following three points:

 

1. The president must commit himself to achieving the goal of universal access to prevention, care and treatment for HIV/Aids by 2010. Year after year since the United Nations commitments on Millennium Development Goals, guaranteeing this universal access, the leaders of rich countries seem to be incapable of keeping their promises. If we assess the situation now that the due date has arrived, the result is disappointing: only a third of those who need antiretroviral treatment have access to it.

Nicolas Srakozy must not renege on his commitments and he must do everything in his power to resolve the financial difficulties faced by the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, caused by repeated failures on the part of donor countries to respect their commitments. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people depend on this Fund every year. Besides it is vital that France find the means of having a bilateral, renewed, complementary and additional policy on its commitments to the Global Fund in order to reinforce the fight against these three pandemics.

 

2. At a time when agreements on free exchange are being made between India and the European Union and other agreements on counterfeiting are being negotiated between industrialised countries and Morocco, Singapore and Mexico (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)) in order to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement, Nicolas Sarkozy must remind us of and show the importance of generic medicines.

Today generic medicines are the only way to drastically reduce the price of treatment in France and the rest of the world.

Therefore, we ask Nicolas Sarkozy to oppose the ACTA agreements and those between India and the EU and to do all in his power to defend the production of cheap medicines.

Nicolas Sarkozy must also take advantage of the G8 meeting to publicly defend the “patent pool” initiative led by UNITAID with the support of The United Kingdom, Brazil, South Korea and Spain.

This initiative encourages international laboratories to authorise the production and marketing of generics in developing countries. Our NGOs have trouble understanding why France has not supported this initiative more when its interest is so obvious.

 

3. Finally we expect the president to keep his recent promise that he would support the Robin Hood tax (a tax on financial transactions that would raise money for development in the world, including access to health).

 

 

 

In 2010 bank transactions accounted for over three trillion dollars. If we deduct 0.0001 per cent from these transactions we could raise 300 billion dollars a year. Following on Nicolas’s Sarkozy and Angela Merkel’s joint statement, Mr Sarkozy must now lead a plan of action in order to implement the mechanism.

It has already been approved by several heads of state, it has no harmful effects on the economy and therefore can be implemented quickly. If the G8 refuses to accept it, it can still be implemented in France and Europe this autumn.

We will not accept any excuses from Nicolas Sarkozy if it is not done.