At the end of this week’s negotiation on the pandemic accord, Roland Driece, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) charged with drafting a pandemic accord, told the final plenary on Friday that “it’s not easy” – a phrase that he repeated four times in the space of minutes.

To ease difficulties, the INB piloted a new approach involving informal sessions to “bridge gaps” on the sidelines of the formal drafting session, Driece said. 

Two informal sessions were held on one of the trickiest aspects of the negotiations: Article 9 (Chapter Two) of the current pandemic accord draft, dealing with the research and development (R&D) of pandemic products. Mexico and Norway facilitated the sessions, while experts were on hand to respond to technical questions.

Meanwhile, in the formal drafting committee, member states “exchanged views” on Articles 9 (R&D), 10 (liability risk management), 11 (technology transfer), 12 (access and benefit-sharing of pathogen), 13 (supply chain) and 14 (regulatory strengthening).

However, before the next set of negotiations from 17-21 July, the INB intends to host three inter-sessional meetings – on articles 9, 12, and 14.

Members support pilot informal sessions

The pilot informal sessions appeared to have the support of member states, with the African region, Latin America, the cross-cutting 20-country Group of Equity, and the European Union (EU) expressing appreciation in the final plenary.

Earlier this week, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides warned a meeting of European health ministers that there is a risk the negotiations “may be derailed by current dynamics”, according to Politico.

💥Explosive remarks on pandemic treaty from Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides at EPSCO.

Treaty negotiations “may be derailed by current dynamics." "I am not going to hide that I am quite concerned important parts of the EU proposals are not reflected in this latest draft."🧵

— Ashleigh Furlong (@ashleighfurlong) June 13, 2023

Kyriakides added that she was “quite concerned” as “important parts of the EU proposals are not reflected in this latest draft”.

However, Sweden, on behalf of the EU said it had been “a very, very useful week” with “very significant progress”.

Driece singled out a discussion on access, benefit sharing and equitable access to counter-measures for helping to “increase the understanding of each other’s perspective, objectives, and proposals and the rationale behind them”.

The EU also supported the informal sessions as a “significant positive development”, while  Colombia, for Latin America, said that these have “allowed us to make progress”.

“Although we have not been able to engage in textual negotiations this week, our discussions have allowed us to have a fuller understanding of one another’s proposals and perspectives on the articles taken up,” said India for the Equity Group.

The African region, via Ethiopia, also welcomed both the informal meetings alongside formal negotiations and the proposed inter-sessional meetings to “enhance mutual understanding”.

However, for the sake of smaller delegates, Ethiopia appealed for hybrid meetings that were well-spaced.

Ethiopia also stressed Africa’s position that the accord needs “concrete obligations on equity and pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery”.

“It’s not that we have big news to share with you all but it’s the only news that we work very hard like I said to get where we want to be,” said Driece.

Meanwhile, co-chair Precious Matsoso encouraged INB members to meet informally whenever they could to exchange views and build friendship and trust.

At the start of the week, Matsoso used various dance analogies to encourage relations between member states. Driece concluded the meeting by saying that he and Matsoso would tango if the pandemic accord was read by April next year.