Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark have signed a cooperation agreement in Brussels to start jointly purchasing medicines. EU health ministers also agreed on new rules to help ensure essential medicines reach people in all member states.
Together, small countries are able to order larger quantities, which helps them get better prices and more reliable delivery terms, the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs announced on social media.
Estonia has long faced the problem that new medicines reach the country nearly two years later than they arrive in other larger markets.
Price applications are submitted in Estonia on average 738 days later than in Western Europe, even though Estonia’s own process is fast and involves little bureaucracy, the ministry said.
On Monday in Brussels, European Union health ministers also agreed on new rules to help ensure essential medicines reach people in all member states, including the smaller ones.
Many medicines are not produced in the European Union, or their production depends heavily on raw materials from China and elsewhere in the world. In the event of a major crisis, there is therefore a strong chance that medicines could run out. Such a s situation has already happened before — during the pandemic — said Estonian Minister of Social Affairs Karmen Joller (Reform).
Although that issue remains a concern across Europe, it particularly affects small countries like Estonia. When a market is small, pharmaceutical manufacturers have little interest in it. Estonia has so far attempted to resolve the situation by reducing the requirements imposed on suppliers. However, the European Union is now trying to set stricter conditions for procurement – for example, that not only price but also product supply security have to be taken into account. Stricter requirements can sometimes be an obstacle, Joller admitted, though they are ultimately necessary to ensure production in Europe.
“In a situation where there are already few medicines on the market, there are not many options. We really don’t want any additional conditions. But the other side of it is that we want to keep medicine production in Europe and the reason why we have to give preference to European production is down to crisis resilience,” Joller said.
According to Joller, should a crisis occur, the additional costs associated with transporting significant amounts of additional medicine across the ocean could make doing so impossible.
“Here, we have looked in detail at the situations in which these costs may increase or the reverse. In fact, our concern is that the costs are currently too high. We would like to see lower medicine prices, as this is one of the reasons why smaller countries cannot afford medicines,” said Joller.
In order to bring prices down, EU member states are trying to organize more joint procurements. To that end, the Baltic states and Denmark signed a cooperation agreement on Tuesday. More broadly, the member states agreed on their position regarding the regulation of essential medicines. Before it can enter into force, a common position also has to be found between the European Parliament and the Commission.
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