Oxfam understands that the EU's Foreign Ministers will agree to a resolution which says that:

• developing countries can abrogate patent rules in favour of public health; 
• developing countries need to be helped to confront powerful drug company interests and, crucially; 
• the European Commission should "report its findings to the Council" once it has investigated what needs to be done to "ensure consistency" between international patent rules and public health. 

According to Oxfam’s David Earnshaw, the resolution "again puts global intellectual property rules as they affect medicines in the spotlight and, again, casts doubt on whether they should remain in place as they are. We will be urging the Commission to ensure that its forthcoming report to ministers is based on facts and not more drug company myths. The next step is to change the global patent rules at the WTO to ensure developing countries can get the cheapest possible medicines."

The ministers' resolution also suggests the "setting up of mechanisms" to force down drug prices in the developing world under any tiered pricing system that is introduced.

According to Earnshaw, "ministers' support for a drug pricing mechanism indicates their unwillingness to trust the empty promises of the drug companies. Clearly, European governments have no intention of trusting the drug companies to set prices themselves in the poor countries any longer. We have seen where that leads", he said.

The resolution should also indicate that the European Commission should work with its G8 partners to develop global resources for tackling the scourge of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. 

Finally, in what will be seen as another blow to the drug companies, the resolution also urges greatly increased local production of medicines in the developing countries, rather than just by the major drug companies of the Northern Hemisphere.