The European Left welcomed the European citizens’ initiative «no profit on pandemic» and is committed to actively supporting this crucial campaign to restore the right to safe access to cure and treatment of European citizens. The right to healthcare and cure will be restored only through a collective effort to build a more democratic Europe; only if the future of the healthcare system will return into the hands of the people, and not of big pharma. 

Furthermore, this campaign is in line with the radical turnaround in the healthcare system that the European left has been calling since the outbreak of this pandemic, namely the creation of a European Health Fund funded by the ECB. This ECB initiative also represents a step forward toward a radical break from neoliberal logic, which is urgently needed to get out of this social and health crisis. 

Europe's citizens deserve institutions that pay more attention to the health of the people than to their media and financial successes. And now it is crucial to lifting on intellectual property rights to increase production and save more lives.  

The European Commission has failed in its strategy to ensure a fair and efficient distribution of vaccines at the European level. Moreover, the commission is not only accountable for the drop in production and the supply of vaccines in Europe. The commission has not even guaranteed the minimum levels of transparency required from an institution supposed to care about the health of its citizens. On the contrary, they have chosen to protect the profits of pharmaceutical corporations and to not reveal key contract sections. 

The idea that the market alone could help get us out of the crises has been a mantra since 2008. Today, the neoliberal mentality that has left the people under the blackmail of the pharmaceutical companies. It is time to stop them make profits from public money invested in the covid-19 vaccination strategy. 

It is time to make access to treatment-free and save for all and lift the intellectual property rights of vaccines to allow for mass production. A collective threat requires a collective response, no private profits.

Heinz Bierbaum,
President of the Party of the European Left