EMEA : "A Rolls-Royce, Not A Trabant"

The setting up of the European Medicines Evaluation Agency is an historic example of a European policy being translated into European action, but its benefits in terms of improving European competitiveness have to be set against the fact that the pharmaceutical industry alone, out of all industrial sectors, cannot benefit from the single market, according to Brian Ager, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations.

He told the annual general meeting of the British Institute of Regulatory Affairs in London this month (see also page 11) that in order to provide European patients with fast access to new drugs, and for the sake of maintaining the pharmaceutical industry as "a genuine asset to Europe," as it was once described by European Commission vice president Martin Bangemann, there is a need for the EMEA to provide a licensing service akin to "a Rolls-Royce rather than a Trabant." he also urged the members of the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products to act in collegiate rather than national terms.

Countries' Responsibility To Encourage Innovation The best incentive for innovation is a healthily competitive market, but internal healthy competition is possible only in an appropriate regulatory environment, which should encourage R&D and not put a brake on innovation, said Mr Ager. It is undesirable that the competitive operation of the pharmaceutical market should be impeded by monopsony purchasing power or national policies, and where this is the case, the authorities in those countries should accept a duty to support R&D and encourage innovation by other means.