The letter<\/a>, entitled Europe is Losing the Pharma Investment Race \u2013 But the Comeback is Within Reach, called on governments to treat medicines as strategic infrastructure, secure health sovereignty and act now to restore Europe\u2019s competitiveness.<\/p>\n It argued that the pharmaceutical sector is one of Europe\u2019s great postwar achievements that is supporting millions of highly skilled jobs and generating an EU trade surplus of more than \u20ac220bn (\u00a3188bn). \u201cBut this hard-won inheritance is at risk,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our boardrooms, we see Europe losing ground to global competition. Over $600bn in pharmaceutical investment has been announced in the US and China<\/a> in the last two years alone.<\/p>\n \u201cEuropean governments must create conditions that attract investment in next-generation medicines before it\u2019s too late,\u201d said the letter, which was also signed by the chairs of Germany\u2019s Boehringer Ingelheim, Italy\u2019s Chiesi group, France\u2019s Sanofi and Ipsen, and Novartis and Roche of Switzerland.<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s share of global pharmaceutical research and development has fallen from 43%<\/a> in 1990 to 31%, according to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).<\/p>\n The continent\u2019s share of commercial clinical trials \u2013 where new medicines are tested for safety and efficacy before they are submitted for regulatory approval \u2013 has halved to 9% from 18%<\/a> a decade ago. Only 4% of clinical trials are focused on cell and gene therapies.<\/p>\n China has overtaken Europe in clinical trials<\/a>, pharmaceutical patents<\/a>, and the development<\/a> of new medicines. The country\u2019s share of global clinical trials rose from less than 10% to almost 30% over the same period.<\/p>\n Almost half (49%) of newly approved therapies did not reach European patients last year, up from 46% in 2019; those drugs that do take nearly 600 days on average. This varies hugely from country to country: from a median 56 days in Germany to 1,201 days in Romania, according to data<\/a> from the EFPIA.<\/p>\n The industry body has said the root causes of unavailability and delay to accessing new medicines range from the speed of regulatory processes to insufficient budgets in some European countries.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every weekday<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Closing the clinical trials gap alone could generate \u20ac53bn and create 82,000 jobs in Europe, the nine pharma companies argued in the letter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe ask national leaders to work with us to reverse Europe\u2019s declining competitiveness, unleash a new era of medical discovery, and secure health sovereignty. We recognise the fiscal pressures many face. But just like defence or energy, modern medicines should be treated as vital infrastructure and not be left to others to provide,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n It was signed by industry leaders including Michel Demar\u00e9, the chair of Britain\u2019s biggest pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca; Jonathan Symonds, his counterpart at GSK<\/a>, the country\u2019s second-biggest drugmaker; Lars Rebien S\u00f8rensen, the chair of the Wegovy and Ozempic maker, Novo Nordisk; Severin Schwan at the Swiss company Roche; Giovanni Caforio at fellow Swiss firm Novartis, and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Oud\u00e9a at France\u2019s Sanofi.<\/p>\n It comes after a public row last year between the industry and the UK government over drug pricing and availability of new treatments to patients. Ministers agreed in December to spend billions of pounds a year extra on medicines<\/a> supplied to the NHS after pressure from Donald Trump<\/a>, who argued that high drug prices in the US were subsidising lower prices elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of Europe\u2019s biggest pharmaceutical companies have said the continent is \u201closing ground\u201d to rivals including the US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-609073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790155696_926_500.jpg\")
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