Chief executives from nine of Europe's largest drugmakers are calling on the European Union (EU) and its member states to sharply increase spending on medicines, speed up clinical trials, and strengthen intellectual property protections or risk watching the region's pharmaceutical industry fall further behind the United States and China.

The warning came in an open letter published on the companies' websites and signed by the chairs of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novo, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi, and Ipsen.¹ It lands amid a longer-running push by lobby groups and drugmakers urging cash-strapped European governments to rethink how they attract, nurture, value, and pay for innovative medicines.

What are the chairs asking for?

The letter calls on the EU to accelerate clinical trials, protect intellectual property, and adopt sensible digital policies.¹ It also asks the EU to give member states more fiscal flexibility to invest in health and innovative medicines, on the grounds that such investments take time to pay off.^1,2

In the letter, the chairs were explicit that EU-level action alone will not solve the problem, rather they say the decisive levers sit with national governments, who control how much to invest in health budgets, how quickly new medicines are assessed and funded, and how healthcare systems are modernized to prevent, detect, and treat disease.^1,2

"Europe's alarm bells are ringing ... without urgent action, strategic sectors like pharmaceuticals face a 'slow agony' of decline," the chairs wrote, invoking a warning previously issued by Mario Draghi. "European governments must create conditions that attract investment in next-generation medicines before it's too late."

How far has Europe fallen behind?

The chairs backed their warning with figures on the sector's declining position, noting about 40% of new therapies never reach European patients, and among those that do, patients wait nearly 600 days for treatment, according to the letter.¹ Europe's share of global pharmaceutical research and development have fallen to 31% from 43% in 1990, while its share of commercial clinical trials, which the chairs say provide vital revenue for public hospitals and improve patient outcomes, have be cut in half to 9% over the past decade.

As noted in the letter, China has overtaken Europe in clinical trials, pharmaceutical patents, and the development of new medicines.¹

The scale of the funding gap is stark by comparison with rival markets. Europe spends about 1% of GDP on pharmaceuticals, compared to 2% in the United States and 1.8% in China.^1,2 Over the past two years alone, more than $600 billion in pharmaceutical investment has been announced in the United States and China combined.¹

Why is the gap widening now?

The chairs argue that Europe's decline traces back to decades of treating medicines as a cost to be suppressed rather than an investment to be made. They point to outdated reimbursement systems constraining the use of innovative medicines, arbitrarily cap budgets, and failing to adjust spending for inflation even as patient need rises.

Bringing a single innovative medicine to patients takes more than a decade and roughly $4 billion in at-risk investment, with only one or two medicines emerging from every 10,000 candidates synthesized in the lab, a risk profile the chairs say few other sectors face over comparably long horizons.

Ron Lanton, senior partner at Lanton, Lanton & Sosa Law, says Europe retains "extraordinary scientific capabilities," but that companies are increasingly planning around far more aggressive policy shifts in the United States, which have already pushed drugmakers to rethink investments, delay launches, and adjust prices. "Europe's pharmaceutical competitiveness problem is not just about R&D funding. Companies are looking at the entire pathway from clinical trials to reimbursement and patient access when deciding where to put capital."

What would closing the gap look like?

The chairs frame the stakes in both economic as well as scientific terms. Europe's choice to incentivize drug discovery built one of its most research-intensive sectors, supporting millions of skilled jobs and generating an EU trade surplus of more than $293 billion, and the uptake of innovative medicines returns nearly sixfold to the economy through lower hospitalization costs and healthier working lives.^1,2 In clinical trials alone, the chairs say Europe could unlock $70 billion and 82,000 jobs by closing the gap with China and the United States.¹

Sources

1. An Open Letter from the Chairs of AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi Group, Ipsen, GSK, Novo, Novartis, Roche, and Sanofi Sanofi September 22, 2026, https://www.sanofi.com/en/media-room/press-releases/2026/2026-09-22-11-48-50-3366209
2. European drugmakers call for faster trials, more spending to compete with US, China Reuters September 22, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/european-drugmakers-call-faster-trials-more-spending-compete-with-us-china-2026-09-22/