If approved, a plan to reform the European Union's pharmaceutical rules will create opportunities to improve the bloc's supply chain resilience in the sector, but this could come at the price of higher costs and reduced competitiveness for the industry. In April, the European Commission proposed an overhaul of the bloc's pharmaceutical rules that has since created controversy in the industry. The reform aims to tackle structural and supply chain issues (such as varying access and costs for treatments and drugs between EU countries), while seeking to improve the bloc's capacity to tackle new and old challenges like antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and rare diseases. But industry groups are warning the reform -- particularly new rules that would shorten drugmakers' standard period of market exclusivity for new medicines -- would dramatically reduce the incentives to invest in Europe, accelerating a trend that has already seen the region lose about a quarter of...
