Suchergebnisse

Suggests that the population of the EU will still need drugs whether or not the EU continues to have a pharmaceutical industry. Various policies trying to control health service drugs bills have affected the drugs industry: increasingly the effects are adverse. The EU Commission is now taking an increasing interest in health care and pharmaceutical industry policy. It is therefore of some urgency to open the debate up by beginning to signal what the EU stands to lose if it loses the pharmaceutical industry in the EU. Although it is highly improbable that the EU will lose all the present pharmaceutical industry in the EU it is likely that it will lose some of it in the next five years, and it is almost certain that the industry in the EU will continue to yield with respect to industry in North America, the Pacific Basin and Asia.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to develop the debate about a symbiotic approach to industrial policy with respect to the pharmaceutical industry in the EU. The EU has an increasingly important role to play in European markets but it seems, at best, to be following a fragmented industrial strategy. There is a real and growing danger that this strategy becomes worse for everyone than no strategy at all. Thus the EU can either go for a comprehensive and comprehensible strategy or let the industry fend for itself amongst disparate health care systems amongst member states. Alternatively it can continue to stumble along with a pastiche of policies. There are signs of some debate about a more holistic approach to industry. In the European Union for example DG (Directorate General) V and DG III produced a communication arguing that "the [European Union] Community policy in favour of the pharmaceutical industry must take notice of [the] twofold context of public health and social security" (Com(93)718:3).This paper identifies current fragments of EU pharmaceutical industrial policy and indicates what a social‐symbiotic approach is. Whether or not the industry in the EU continues to decline with respect to the industry elsewhere Asia and America in particular, the sick people of the EU will still need medication: a symbiotic approach to industrial policy can help stem the relative decline in the EU and indeed could reverse it.

The pharmaceutical business has long been a source of controversy, particularly the ability to market a drug for human consumption. The thalidomide disaster of the late 1950s and early 1960s invoked all nations in the 15 member states of the EU to require that a pharmaceutical product intended for human consumption have an official market licence before it is allowed onto the nation's market. Until December 1994 each nation in the EU could decide itself what products came onto its market. From January 1995 the European Commission, facilitated by the European Medicines Evaluation Agency, has had the power to decide on applications for pan‐EU market licences. Explores the new EU licensing system, drawing from past and present experience, and argues that although complex at least four sets of motivations lie behind the construction of the EMEA system: the EU prisoners' dilemma; four types of market failures; extensions of politico‐bureaucratic business and, finally, the inability of the pharmaceutical industry to nurture effectively any feasible alternative to the new system.