Nine leading European pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, GSK and Novo Nordisk, have written to national leaders across Europe warning that the continent is losing its competitive advantage in drug development to the United States and China. The letter calls on governments to treat medicines as strategic infrastructure and act urgently to reverse declining investment and competitiveness. The appeal comes amid concerns that Europe's historically dominant role in pharmaceuticals—a sector supporting millions of skilled jobs and generating an EU trade surplus exceeding €220 billion—is being eroded by superior investment and innovation capacity elsewhere.

Europe's pharmaceutical landscape has weakened considerably over recent decades. The continent's share of global research and development has fallen from 43% in 1990 to 31%, whilst its share of commercial clinical trials has halved from 18% to 9% over the past decade. Meanwhile, China has overtaken Europe across multiple metrics, including clinical trials (rising from under 10% to almost 30%) and pharmaceutical patents. Additional pressures include regulatory delays and inconsistent medicine availability across member states: whilst Germany approves new drugs within a median of 56 days, Romania takes 1,201 days. Last year, 49% of newly approved therapies failed to reach European patients. The companies argue that closing the clinical trials gap alone could generate €53 billion and create 82,000 jobs.