PTA‟s with TRIPS provisions between EU-South Korea and EU-India compared: Access to essential pharmaceuticals in danger?

In recent years the European Union has been forming bilateral preferred trade agreements containing intellectual property articles which go beyond the TRIPS agreement on intellectual property rights. In 2010 an agreement was made with South Korea and currently talks with India for a PTA are ongoing. A PTA with India has been in the works for several years now and has caused commotion. This commotion is due to worries that a PTA will hurt access to essential medication for not only the poor in India but also for the poor in the second and third world. The goal of this thesis was to find out what the relationship is between these two PTA‟s and the right to health, focusing specifically on access to essential medication. To find out what exactly the relationship was between the EU/India and the EU/South Korea PTA‟s and the right to health literature research was done of the relevant scientific sources and organizations. Another method that was used was doing law comparative research between the TRIPS agreement and these PTA‟s to identify possible TRIPS plus articles. The first research step was making an analyses of what these two PTA‟s exactly entail and to assess what‟s relevant. Since the EU/India PTA still hasn‟t been signed information was collected on what‟s currently on the negotiation table. This was followed by research in the literature to find out what the possible consequences could be of both PTA‟s regarding pharmaceutical patents and access to essential medication. This was done so that the legal issues could be placed into context. Step three was a search for relevant case law at the WTO and the national courts of India and South Korea to see where possible conflicts could lie with national law and both PTA‟s in regards to pharmaceuticals. The fourth step was making a comparison between the social and economic situation in India with that of South Korea to put these PTA‟s into contexts. Specifically focusing on the differences in: *GDP and life expectancy *The health care system in India and South Korea The goal of this was to see where the (legal) issues and consequences of these PTA‟s are the same and where they differ. The fifth and final step was applying a theoretical model. To help make a founded analyses a theoretical model which offers the possibility to balance economic gains against possible negative effects in the area of human rights has been used. This led to the conclusion that the relationship with the human right to health and more specifically access to essential medication, was different for India and South Korea even though the intellectual property chapters are reasonably similar. This was due to the importance of the context of the country in regards to the effects that a PTA has or in the case of India will have.