While France is experiencing tensions on the stocks of several drugs, the Head of State must announce a plan to accelerate “health recovery”.
In 10 years, France has gone from first to fifth place among drug producers in Europe, according to Leem, the union of drug companies in France. The pharmaceutical industry – which has more than 100,000 employees at 271 sites – relocated its production significantly in the 2000s. This concerned above all the manufacture of old drugs, the formulas of which fell into the public domain. All the laboratories were able to produce them and these pharmaceutical products became unprofitable.
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In a report published on June 23, 2021, the parliamentarians of the drug information mission conclude that “France is in a situation of strong dependence vis-à-vis foreign countries”. 70% of the active ingredients used for medicines are produced abroad, mainly in China. France produces only 6% of its active ingredients for vital drugs, called “drugs of major therapeutic interest” by the High Commission for Planning. This may be treatment for a thyroid problem or blood thinners. This rate drops to 5% for biomedicines, such as gene or cell therapies.
The situation is the same at European level.
80% of the production sites for these active ingredients are located outside Europe, mainly in China and India. However, in the 1990s, Europe produced, on the contrary, 80% of the active ingredients it used. European countries, on the other hand, are less dependent on the final stages of drug production, for the manufacture of tablet coatings or packaging.
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed this addiction. “More than 3,000 drugs are in short supply”, alerted on franceinfo on May 12, Sonia de La Provôté, president of the senatorial commission of inquiry into the shortage of drugs and the choices of the pharmaceutical industry.
Relocating drug production, an ambitious challenge?
Faced with this observation, France wants to relocate its pharmaceutical production, in particular via the France Relance plan. The State supports 19 companies including Diverchim CDMO and its “emergency drugs” project. Based in Roissy-en France in Val-d’Oise, the laboratory “manufacturer of active ingredients in small quantities for the pharmaceutical industry has decided to take up the challenge […] and to resume their manufacture in France” of curare, an anesthetic that has been in short supply in recent years. Another example is a manufacturing plant for paracetamol, the best-selling painkiller in the world, to reopen in 2024 or 2025 in Roussillon in Isère. It closed in 2008. Its reopening was initially scheduled for 2023.
Emmanuel Macron is going to Champagne-en-Ardèche on Tuesday June 13. During this trip dedicated to the “industrial sovereignty”, the Head of State will visit the Aguettant pharmaceutical laboratory, which specializes in particular in anesthesia-resuscitation products. Medicines that had been missing during the Covid-19 crisis. The company will increase its production capacities.
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A list of priority drugs, some of which may be relocated to France, was initially to be published at the end of May. Nevertheless, Leem wants to ensure that its relocations will be profitable. The union of pharmaceutical industries demanded in May the revaluation of the price of certain drugs in France, because of the rise in industrial costs.