Can we afford to lose the pharmaceutical industry in the EU?

Abstract

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.