This decision created a mechanism to allow WTO members to issue compulsory licences to export generic versions of patented medicines to countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector.
The 2005 Ministerial Declaration stated: "We reaffirm the importance we attach to the General Council Decision of 30 August 2003 on the Implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, and to an amendment to the TRIPS Agreement replacing its provisions.
On November 30, 2007, Peter Mandelson, the then European Union's Trade Commissioner, announced that the European Union formally accepted the World Trade Organization -approved protocol of December 2005, amending the TRIPS Agreement.
However, in order for the decision to have legal effect, two-thirds of the WTO's 153 Members are required to ratify the agreement.
[6] Pascal Lamy, who was the European Commissioner for Trade at the time of the declaration, stated that the agreement "solved about 10 percent of the problem of access to medicines by developing countries.