It doesn’t mean not doing anything: “It would be dangerous not to act now, but then I think we need to find ways of working together,” he said. Eichwalder added that it was important that national deals — with industry or the U.S. — do “not weaken the position of the EU, and in the end, the position of any member state within the EU.”
The bottom line: Countries should work together “no matter how difficult it is,” he said. “I don’t see a solution for Europe to go 27 different different routes.”
Think this through: Yannis Natsis, director of the European Social Insurance Platform, said countries should be asking themselves this question: If we were to accept paying higher prices, what can we get in return? “From a first reading of this agreement, France is committing to pay higher prices in return for what exactly? And what are companies committing to delivering in exchange for these higher prices?”
The bigger picture: “Many narratives are going around. Narratives that are used by different sectors to serve specific interests,” Natsis said. “And in this case, this narrative is used to ask and demand higher prices. But again, the question is: if we were to pay these higher prices in Europe… what happens to the other countries? Because if France signs an agreement, if Germany signs an agreement, what about the rest of us?”
Pushing back: Richard Bergström, vice president of European affairs at health data firm IQVIA and former chief of pharma lobby EFPIA, pushed back. “If you read the French deal… there’s a lot of wins for the governments as well,” he told panelists from the audience. “There are requirements on clinical trials, requirements on manufacturing in Europe, and most importantly, there is a gain at the end of life cycle.” It’s a “quite balanced deal,” he added.
OVER IN BRITAIN: The U.K.-U.S. drug pricing deal — which is hailed by the Trump administration and industry as a blueprint for other European countries — is running up against some challenges, our colleague Caroline Hug writes in. Four pilots rolled out to try to meet U.S. demands to double medicines spending as a percentage of GDP by 2028 are currently falling short. Britain’s new Science Minister Chris McDonald has signaled the government is willing to try new ideas.