Brussels, 02/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - The General Assembly of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has elected Sir Tom McKillop, Chief Executive of AstraZeneca (UK) to be its new President and take over from Mr Jean-François Dehecq, Sanofi-Synthélabo (France). Dr Franz B. Humer, Head of Roche (Switzerland) has been elected Vice-President together with Mr Dehecq. This election took place at the EFPIA's Annual Meetings (24-26 June) in Bruges. Tom McKillop began his mandate as new President reaffirming the loss in competitiveness in the European pharmaceutical industry in comparison with its US competitors, which is essentially due to environmental regulation and societal attitudes in Europe. Mr McKillop called on the European institutions and governments to take concrete steps to create a more favourable environment for competition and investments in research. He pointed out that the pharmaceutical industry was expecting the review of pharmaceutical legislation and the G10 process now under way to open on a number of key deliverables on some priority issues: safeguard high levels of intellectual property protection; improve the current legislation on data protection; support the development of paediatric medicines; implement Directive 98/44/EEC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions; Put in place incentives to foster R&D in Europe; develop a EU network of research competence centres; Reduce marketing authorisation delays; reduce post-marketing authorisation delays and Set up of fast track procedure; liberalisation of information to patients.