More on Interlaken Declaration Paragraph 12

What was interesting in the discussions during the CGRFA on paragraph 12 of the Interlaken Declaration which deals with IPR on animals, was that during the plenary when Interlaken Declaration was the agenda, delegations agreed for the deletion of the text with reference to IPR (or this was the general understanding as reflected in the draft report). Germany made the intervention at the last minutes of the whole CGRFA meeting - during the adoption of the report - on the eve of 15 June 2007, much to the disappointment of some delegations and civil society organisations. Here are additional excerpts (not exact wordings):

Germany: asked to refer back to the reference on IPR in paragraph 12

Argentina: The proposal of Germany goes beyond Article 27.3b of TRIPS and is covered by the proposal of Australia on 'consistent with international agreements'. TRIPS agreement is already covered. The proposal of Germany goes beyond TRIPS and went beyond 15 minutes after the discussions (on agenda item: Interlaken Declaration which was earlier discussed in plenary). We should work on equal terms.

Chair: Thank you, it was very clear. EU (addressing Germany) do you want to keep it in brackets?

Germany: Obviously not possible for us to know the conditions in the negotiations at that time. We prefer (the text on paragraph 12) to be in the form as seen before. EU has not understood that this text has disappeared. If there is no possibility, we stick to the proposal in brackets.

(There were some movements in the other EU delegations - some were about to approach Germany, or so we think and so Germany said..) To ease our life in EU, we say this is a German addition.