EPHA joins European and international organisations calling on the European Union to bring fairer drug prices in Europe through the use of its legislative and non-legislative instruments, such as the upcoming EU4Health Programme, the European Recovery Instrument and the Pharmaceuticals Strategy for Europe.
Medicines, given their role in our healthcare systems, should be considered a public good. They are an essential element of countries’ strategies to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals’ health targets. However, current pharmaceutical price levels play at the expense of access for the patients and healthcare systems in Europe and in the world, while not all new medicines have a proven, measurable added therapeutic benefit.
The organisations are calling for the following:
- A radical rethinking of the way pharmaceutical markets and health systems operate in Europe is needed.
- Transparency of medicines prices and their research and development, production, marketing and regulatory costs, as well as a methodology to calculate them, is needed.
- The European Commission should include accessibility, affordability, transparency clauses in all forms of public funding and/or public-private partnership in pharmaceutical research.
- The forthcoming EU Pharmaceutical Strategy must address the abuse of the current model of pharmaceutical incentives, which are particularly acute in the orphan and paediatrics regulations.
- The European Commission should uphold strong scientific, regulatory standards to assess added therapeutic benefit
The full statement can be downloaded below.
