Pfizer appeals to EU over PIs in Spain

Pfizer has now followed GlaxoSmithKline in trying to apply the brake toparallel exports of pharmaceuticals in the Spanish market (Marketletter May 14).

While in 1998 it was illegal under Spanish law to apply a double price for drug products (one for the internal market and the other for the export market), the law was later modified so that a medicine could be sold inside Spain at a price fixed by the government, if it was reimbursable by social security, and another price outside Spain.

However, a modification introduced in January this year has established a system under which the maximum government-controlled price applies both inside and outside the country, although many pharmaceutical companies operating in Spain are understood to have not yet applied this regulation. Part of the reason for the delay in applying the change is reported to be that wholesalers have brought pressure to bear on the drug manufacturers which were intending to apply the new policy, threatening to block their Spanish domestic market distribution.