On Monday 15 April, Medicines for Europe (the drug industry) recommended measures to facilitate the reallocation of stocks of medicines from one EU country to another.
According to the organisation, some EU Member States (France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Greece, Denmark and Poland) are increasingly asking medicine manufacturers to stockpile, “undermining EU solidarity and exacerbating the risk of shortages”.
Stockpiling mandates “prevent manufacturers from reallocating medicines to another EU country to solve a shortage”, says the organisation. In addition, this problem would undermine the economic viability of many inexpensive generic medicines by increasing storage costs and the risk of stock write-offs. “A six-month stockpile of antibiotics in Germany would equate to one quarter of the EU’s supply”, says Medicines for Europe. In particular, the organisation proposes facilitating the reallocation of stocks from one country to another and investing in the digitalisation of the regulatory network.
Link to detailed position: https://aeur.eu/f/bsa (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)