02/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the Annual General Meeting of EFPIA (the European Pharmaceutical Industry Federation) in Lucerne on 19-22 July, the EFPIA President Jean-François Dehecq (Sanofi-Synthélabo) again insisted that the European Union was losing its attraction to the pharmaceutical industry, noting that the biggest innovative laboratories only spent 59% of their Research and Development credits in the EU in 1999, compared with 73% in 1990. Pointing out that the United States had benefited most from this development, he explained that moving the centre of gravity to the United States was justified by the less favourable economic and trading climate in the EU. One of the reasons he cited for this was the patchwork of price and reimbursement systems. Echoing the comments he made on becoming EFPIA President at the beginning of the year, Mr Dehecq called for effective legal intellectual property protection in candidate countries before enlargement; an effective implementation of the TRIPS agreement which should not be challenged; an improvement in the authorisation procedures for marketing a product (in particular for mutual recognition of the product); and measures to reduce market fragmentation and counter parallel imports.