The Covid-19 pandemic did deep and lasting damage to the international political system. Countries in the global south are keenly aware that the established order let them down. They received vaccines later, in smaller numbers and often at a higher price than rich countries, resulting in avoidable death and suffering, and extended economic malaise. Last week, a coalition of those countries made their displeasure known by continuing to stonewall negotiations on the vaunted pandemic preparedness treaty of the World Health Organization (WHO), sending a clear message that when the next crisis arrives, they will not accept the same status quo.

An international treaty is sorely needed. But five years into negotiations, it is clear that the western backers of this plan, especially in Europe, have consistently presented it as a fait accompli, while avoiding the most basic and obvious political impasse before them.

In broad terms, countries in the global north want global south states to share information on any new pathogens their scientists encounter. (Research shows that the next pandemic is most likely to emerge from their region.) In return, those countries have organised to demand that global north states and pharmaceutical companies be required to share treatments, including vaccines, developed from that information – a quid pro quo that western states would prefer to keep voluntary. The fact that this sounds like technocratic haggling in what is in effect an annex of the main treaty belies its importance. Vaccine equity is a long-held red line for these global south groups. The larger treaty cannot be ratified without agreement on this issue.

Europe has been the greatest champion of this process. Ordinarily that would be commendable. But shortly after negotiations began in 2021, global health scholars warned that no agreement would be possible without addressing the concerns of the global south. This is entirely reasonable: an international pandemic response must mean fair access to treatments. The current global south negotiating position is for just 20% of medicines to be earmarked for them, as well as technology-sharing to arrange their own production. The pharmaceutical industry has opposed this, but that is to be expected. Governments could make firms at least partly address those demands by coercing or cajoling them – via guaranteed profits or other subsidies. If they had no plan to do so, they have been engaging in fantasy negotiations for half a decade.

Talks are set to continue next year. If they stall again or collapse entirely it will have consequences beyond global health. These sorts of agreements are the loose bonds that tie countries in the international system together. Europe hoped to take the lead and show that basic international consensus could still be brokered in a post-pandemic world – that frayed bonds could be reknit. Each passing year has strained the system further, and the US is now negotiating its own global health surveillance system through bilateral agreements outside the WHO.

The world needs an agreement to prepare for and respond to the next pandemic. And the custodians of the global order need to produce proof that the system can still function. Covid-19 prefigured and contributed to our current crises: “might makes right” and narrow national interest crowded out international cooperation. Avoiding a reckoning with that history suggests that the global north learned little from the Covid years, and has no serious plan for the future.