At their informal meeting in Warsaw on Tuesday 25 March, the European health ministers seemed prepared to reach a common position on the pharmaceutical package in May, if possible.
The Polish minister, Izabela Leszczyna, welcomed the fact that all the ministers had asked to “put the patient first”. It is important to ensure that the industry is competitive, “but the pharmaceutical package must include a second pillar, namely access to medicines for all patients, for all Europeans”, she said.
Critical medicines and the pharmaceutical package were discussed at a ministerial working lunch. As far as pharmaceutical legislation is concerned, the Polish Presidency of the Council hopes to get the EU countries to adopt a position and a mandate within the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the EU (Coreper) in mid-May to launch negotiations with the European Parliament. The Council working group will meet at the beginning of April to examine the final version of the text, before it goes to Coreper.
In response to a question from the press, Izabela Leszczyna stressed that the most important issues to be negotiated “are still ahead of us”, i.e. access to medicines and data protection periods (the period during which other companies will not be able to access product data).
Disease prevention. In the afternoon, the Member States discussed national disease prevention initiatives, such as cancer screening.
“We have begun discussions with the ministers on our proposal for a European cardiovascular health plan”, also stressed Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi. He explained that the EU had very strong public health policies, “but we have not been able to influence people’s personal choices”, such as eating more healthily. “This means that we must improve prevention”, insisted the Commissioner, who spoke of “personalised medicine”. New technologies, based on data, artificial intelligence and genetic technologies, are useful in this context, according to Mr Várhelyi. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)