Netherlands’ ambassador to India Marten van den Berg on Thursday said both the countries are looking to collaborate on the fronts of healthcare as well as trade. He further revealed that the European nation is working closely with India’s Serum Institute of India (SII) on research and development of vaccines. In an exclusive conversation with
Netherlands’ ambassador to India Marten van den Berg on Thursday said both the countries are looking to collaborate on the fronts of healthcare as well as trade. He further revealed that the European nation is working closely with India’s Serum Institute of India (SII) on research and development of vaccines.
In an exclusive conversation with News18 on whether the world should look at dropping patent waivers, he said, “We all very much share the goal of vaccinating everyone. We are all together in the same boat. So the only way to get out of it safely is getting everyone in the world vaccinated. But the discussion on the vaccinations is much broader and more complex. So the short term is really about increasing production. I don’t think that a patent freeze will contribute in the short term. There needs to be more focus on removing import barriers for every resilient supply chains.”
In a significant move, the five-nation grouping BRICS on Tuesday supported a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily waive patents on Covid-19 vaccines and called for their equitable access and distribution while ensuring transparency on prices.
Ways to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, including sharing technology to boost production of vaccines and improving supply chains for medical products, figured prominently at a virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) countries.
The ambassador also spoke about why it is important that India and Netherlands work closely on vaccine development.
“Now, first, it’s very important that we scale up our production. India is very important in terms of producer manufacturing of vaccines. So together EU and India, for example, are going to strengthen the resilience of supply chains. So that’s very important in terms of collaborating in trade policies on the longer run. I think it’s very important to do collaborative research on vaccine development,” he said.
On India and EU finally resuming free trade pact talks after 8 years this week, he said, “I think it was very important that the EU and India agreed to again start negotiations on a trade agreement, but also a separate track on an investment agreement and also on geographical indications. And also we are a big trade partner with India and we are a big investor in India. So for us, it’s very important that EU and India start negotiations because we know that trade agreements really improve trade relationships and investment agreements really has a positive contribution to investments. And there are a lot of Dutch companies who are already investing, but also would like to expand investment in India with the investment agreements.”
The Dutch ambassador said that they are working closely with India’s Serum Institute of India and working together towards vaccine research.
“The Serum Institute, of course, very well known in India, also has a resource base in the Netherlands. So we have a very close collaboration. And also we’re looking for increasing our collaborative research. It is a very important topic in collaboration between the Netherlands and India. And I think it’s key address the challenges of conflicts. Besides health, we do see a lot of other areas where we have close collaboration between the Netherlands and India, for example, water, agriculture, energy and climate,” added.
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