PHARMACEUTICALS : MEPS REFRAME DEBATE ON MEDICINES.

• Position: Members of parliament

Effective intellectual property rights, EU regulation, research and development, an open market: keywords for the pharmaceutical industry, which are certain to be aired widely at the first Pharmaceutical Forum in Brussels on 29 September.

The tone was set on 27 September in Strasbourg. "Are we playing our role in moving science and research forward?" Antonio Trakatellis (EPP, EL) asked a meeting of the Kangaroo group of MEPs who fervently support the internal market. The industry recognises that Parliament has a major role to play in many dossiers relating to public health, not least the budget for the Seventh Framework Programme for research and development and the place reserved for health in the programme, the regulation on medicinal products for paediatric use, the revision of the medicines regulation with the consecration of the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) at EU level, and that the debate on mental health in the EU led by John Bowis (EPP, UK).

Notwithstanding, "concrete measures must be developed" to improve the competitiveness of the sector, according to Brian Ager, Director-General of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations (EFPIA), who argues that R&D would suffer in the sector if intellectual protection were too short (eight to 10-year patents for new medicines), given that the development of a product can cost up to 900 million. Not to mention the fact that barely three medicines in ten available on the market recoup research costs. In short, there is, according to the industry, an urgent need to establish an internal market for medicines.

But the Pharmaceutical Forum is still in its infancy. It has risen from the ashes of the G10 under the Prodi Commission, in the context of which the three key questions for the sector - reimbursement/price of medicines, relative effectiveness and patient information - remained unanswered. The situation will not change so long as states refused to give ground, one expert recently suggested. One MEP said that there is nothing to prevent the 20 health ministers due to attend the forum on 29 September from slowing down the forum's work since it impinges on national competencies.

Bowis...