After initially being shelved by the compromise in the ENVI committee, the article establishing a European Medicines Facility is back on the table and will be submitted to the plenary session on April 10 and 11 when new European pharmaceutical legislation will be voted on in Brussels
Forum on Inequality and Diversity welcomes the support of a group of fifty MEPs from different parties who signed an important amendment to the European pharmaceutical legislation regulation. The amendment revives the creation of a Public european infrastructure for vaccine, medicines and biomedical innovation, a proposal ForumDD has been advocating since before the pandemic. After at first being shelved by the compromise reached in the ENVI committee, now, thanks to the determination of a group of MEPs, Article 40a establishing the European Medicines Facility is back on the table and will be put to a vote during the plenary session on April 10 and 11 when MEPs in Brussels will vote on reports on the proposed directives and regulations to revise European pharmaceutical legislation. This is a unique opportunity to pursue those decisive choices that can rebuild society’s trust in the European Union.
The first signatories of the amendment are the Socialist and Democrat group’s Italian MEPs Alessandra Moretti, Brando Benifei and Patrizia Toia, followed by a substantial group of MEPs of different nationalities, including many Socialists but also several from the Left, Green, Renew Liberal and Non-Inscrits groups and a member of the European People’s Party, reflecting the cross-party consensus that the proposal can garner.
The European Medicines Facility, a “CERN of health”, is proposed as an infrastructure capable of asserting EU health priorities in the public interest and directing research and development of medicines, particularly those that are not sufficiently developed by the private pharmaceutical industry or whose prices are unaffordable. Not an instrument opposed to the pharmaceutical industry, which will be able to benefit from numerous incentives confirmed by the compromise reached in the ENVI committee, but an autonomous entity in the public interest.
This proposal goes far beyond the uncertain path left open with the compromise amendment proposing to make the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), an autonomous structure independent of the Commission and under the direction of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
The proposal to create a Public european infrastructure for vaccine, medicines and biomedical innovation has long garnered the support of numerous members of the scientific world, including Silvio Garattini and Giuseppe Remuzzi, president and scientific director of the “Mario Negri” Institute for Pharmacological Research, former health ministers Rosy Bindi and Giulia Grillo, and Nobel laureates Amartya Sen, Barry Barish, and Giorgio Parisi, who signed along with thousands of researchers, physicians, and citizens the petition launched by ForumDD in 2022 in support of the infrastructure. The consensus among international organizations working in defense of public health was also broad.
“It is encouraging that a large group of MEPs share the usefulness of a public infrastructure for medicines, the approval of which would be a huge step forward in building a Europe of health common good,” says Massimo Florio Professor at University of Milan and member of the Forum on Inequality and Diversity. “The initiative of the 50 MEPs shows that this is an achievable goal, as well as an indispensable building block for the construction of a fairer Europe. We hope that the European Parliament will not miss this opportunity for a new approach to address the challenge of unmet medical needs.”
Here is the link to the text of the amendment.