Brussels, 06/06/2005 (Agence Europe) - On 2 June the president of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries, the president of the Swiss group Roche, Franz Humer welcomed the strategy presented by European Commissioner for Industry, Günter Verheugen, on making the pharmaceutical industry more competitive (EUROPE 8959). The future technological platform for innovative medicines as part of the 7th Framework Research Programme currently being prepared for 2007-13 could in this way contribute to European pharmaceutical research. Europe is still behind on providing laboratories with the necessary conditions for developing their research activities, explained Mr Humer. The current debate bears this out on the additional protection period for medicines (this involves according to the formulas, a period of three or eight months extension of the complementary protection certificate) which will be granted for carrying out clinical trials on the paediatric use of products. This system has existed for ten years in the USA. It works and is effective and contains an incentive of an additional six months of complementary protection. The EPIA president pointed out that as well as paediatric medicines, laboratories in Europe are facing market fragmentation with prices set by Member States for non-reimbursable specialities and procedures for marketing which can still reach 600 days in some Union Member States.
The Head of the French Sanofi-Aventis group, Jean-François Dehecq said that there were fantastic opportunities in Europe but that this was a question of will. He underlined the fact that relocations feared in the pharmaceutical sphere will not be towards countries in the southern hemisphere but to the USA and it was perfectly possible to avoid them by providing companies with conditions that were as least as attractive as those in the USA. He informed EUROPE that as long as Europe had diversity it had a chance, such as the Italian creative genius and the technical skills of northern Europe. Dehecq explained that they should not be fatalistic about the US dominating the pharmaceutical market but that reflection processes had to end. He added that he had requested that they start putting things into practice and that they had to start making progress with market access and dealing with parallel imports, as well as by putting money into health research. If this was not forthcoming, relocations would continue to go in the direction of Boston.