VOUCHER SYSTEM
To address that problem, the commission is looking at introducing transferable vouchers that would allow a company coming up with a new, effective antibiotic to apply a lengthened period of exclusivity to another more profitable drug or to sell that right to another company.
Around half the EU member states, including France, Belgium and the Netherlands, are wary of that idea though, worried it would weigh on national health systems.
The European Consumer Organisation has also come out against that proposal.
“But so far, no one has proposed a better system,” said one EU lawmaker, Peter Liese, who is also a medical doctor.
He said that virtually no new antibiotic had been produced in 20 years. On this issue and the others the commission is proposing, “innovation-friendly regulation is indispensable”, he said.
The commission also wants a faster approval process to get new drugs to market faster, as happened with COVID-19 vaccines.
And it is suggesting a measure to force companies to be more transparent about the stocks of drugs they have so that any looming shortfalls can be tackled earlier on.
For Pauline Londeix, co-founder of OTMeds, a French group monitoring levels of transparency on drugs policies, “a centralised system of alerts on shortages goes in the right direction but is not enough in itself”.
She argues that the EU should consider “coordinated action at the European level for the part-public production of essential medicines”.
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