Pharma leaders urge Europe to halt 'slow agony' of decline
Europe's top pharma groups have called for governments in the region to stop viewing new medicines as a cost to suppress, rather than "one of the best investments [they] can make."
In an open letter, the chairs of AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi, Ipsen, GSK, Novo, Novartis, Roche, and Sanofi write that, without urgent action on this issue, Europe will continue to fall behind the US and China, which have seen more than $600 billion in pharma investments in the last two years.
Citing former Italian Prime Minister and economist Mario Draghi, the company leaders have urged the EU and national governments in Europe to counter the 'slow agony' of decline facing strategic sectors like pharma, which has seen its global share of R&D fall from 43% in 1990 to a current level of 31%.
"Outdated systems constrain the use of innovative medicines, arbitrarily cap budgets, and fail to adjust spending for inflation despite rising patient need," they argue.
"Government policies send a powerful signal about how innovation is valued and the priority placed on ensuring that patients can access it. In our boardrooms, we see Europe losing ground to global competition."
The signatories to the open letter say that around 40% of newly approved therapies never reach European patients, with long delays for those that do as a result of lengthy pricing and reimbursement negotiations, which they link to poorer cancer survival in Europe compared to the US.
It's likely no accident that the letter coincided with a public hearing in the US on an ongoing investigation by the US Trade Representative into changes to Germany's reimbursement and rebate policies for new medicines, which have incensed the pharma industry. Some large drugmakers, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Boehringer, and AZ, have threatened to reduce capital investments in Germany and hold off launching new drugs there in protest.
At the hearing, pharma representatives argued that Germany's reforms harm innovation and restrict patient access to new medicines, whilst threatening US commerce and placing an unfair share of R&D costs on the US healthcare ecosystem.
"EU action alone is not enough," write the chairs in the letter. "The decisive levers lie with national governments: how much to invest in health budgets, how quickly new medicines are assessed and funded, and how to modernise healthcare to better prevent, detect, and treat disease."
There has been pushback against this narrative with organisations like Global Health Advocates and Médecins du Monde, who have proposed an alternative (PDF) in which Europe, while not perfect, is leading the way on issues like transparency, fair pricing, equitable access, and global justice, while the pharma industry is carrying out "corporate blackmail."
"Comeback is within reach"
The pharma leaders end the letter on a positive note, saying that Europe's story can be "one of renewal and resilience" if governments rebalance decades of underinvestment in innovative medicines and modernise value frameworks to reflect the total value of what these treatments bring to patients.
They suggest that in clinical trials – where Europe's global share has halved to 9% in the last decade – the region could unlock €53 billion and 82,000 jobs by closing the gap with China and the US.
"If we fail to act with ambition, our future will be built elsewhere. But if we choose to invest in health and medicines as strategic assets, Europe will not merely catch up – it can set the pace of global innovation once again and enable Europeans to live longer, healthier lives," they contend.
