Europe Is Losing the Pharma Investment Race, Nine Drug Chiefs Warn
The chairs of nine large pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, GSK and Novo Nordisk, have written to Andy Burnham and other European national leaders to warn that Europe is "losing ground" to rivals including the US and China. The letter was sent on Tuesday.
The other signatories are the chairs of Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi group, Sanofi, Ipsen, Novartis and Roche. Their intervention was reported by The Guardian on 22 September 2026.
The document is titled 'Europe Is Losing the Pharma Investment Race – But the Comeback Is Within Reach'. It says over $600bn in pharmaceutical investment was announced in the US and China in the last two years alone. It says the pharmaceutical sector generates an EU trade surplus of more than €220bn, meaning the EU exports far more medicines than it imports.
On research, the gap is widening. Like a pipeline, early research decides what medicines exist later. Citing EFPIA data, the letter says Europe's share of global pharmaceutical research and development, the work of discovering and testing new drugs, fell from 43% in 1990 to 31%. Its share of commercial clinical trials, the regulated patient studies needed for approval, fell from 18% a decade ago to 9%. Over the same period, China's share of global clinical trials rose from less than 10% to almost 30%.
Access to new treatments is uneven. According to EFPIA data, almost half of newly approved therapies, 49%, did not reach European patients last year, up from 46% in 2019. New medicines that do reach European patients take nearly 600 days on average. The national range runs from a median 56 days in Germany to 1,201 days in Romania.
The letter follows earlier industry warnings about where companies invest and develop drugs. Pharma chief executives alerted President von der Leyen to the risk of an exodus of pharmaceutical investment to the United States, in a statement published in April 2025 by EFPIA. In March 2026, AstraZeneca executive Ruud Dobber said Europe risked falling behind the US and China because of how governments value medicines, as reported by Reuters. In June 2026, a senior Pfizer executive said China has pulled ahead of Europe in pharmaceutical innovation and drug development, according to Reuters.
On licensing, deals where a company pays for rights to a drug found elsewhere, almost half of US deals to bring in licensed drugs from abroad in 2025 were with Chinese companies, according to GlobalData, as reported by Reuters on 18 September 2026.
The broader context here is a triangle European policymakers have struggled to square. Export strength coexists with a smaller share of early research and trial activity. Trial sites and factory spending can move faster than pricing and approval systems. When development work concentrates elsewhere, launches elsewhere tend to follow first.
Looking at what this means for governments, the letter frames the issue as investment conditions, not only health budgets. How medicines are valued, how fast and predictable clinical trial approvals are, and the lag between EU approval and national patient access sit at the centre. The figures on 49% non-availability and the spread from 56 to 1,201 days give leaders a domestic political angle alongside the industrial one. For diplomacy, the US-China link matters. Washington remains the main pull for capital, while Beijing has become a source of both trial capacity and drugs for licensing.
In my view, the choice of addressees is deliberate. Writing to national leaders rather than Brussels alone reflects where market access, pricing and hospital use are decided. It also tests whether member states will align on trial infrastructure and access times while competing for manufacturing plants. The title promises a comeback within reach. Whether capitals treat that as a joint plan or as separate national bids will shape where the next part of the $600bn goes.
