GSK, Janssen, Pfizer and UCB join forces in Belgium

GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutica (Johnson & Johnson group), Pfizer and UCB have launched a new association in Brussels to defend their common interests in Belgium.

Entitled 'Health, Science and Technology Group,' the new association has set itself the mission of 'safeguarding and stimulating r&d, production and exportation activities'.

At the end of 2005, the Belgian press reported the discontentment of GSK, UCB and Janssen with regard to pharma.be, the official association that represents the pharmaceutical industry. These three groups felt they were being poorly represented and had begun to take initiatives outside pharma.be.

The directors of the new group said their initiative was complementary to the rest of the sector. These companies together make up nearly 90% of pharmaceutical investment in Belgium and employ around 15,000 people in Belgium.

'We are still members of pharma.be's board and what we do will be in addition to the activities of pharma.be,' stressed the ceo for GSK Belgium, Olivier Daubry. His counterpart at UCB Belgium, Didier Malherbe, added: 'We are there to defend Belgium before defending our four companies'.

The four companies presented a memorandum on the contribution of the pharmaceutical industry to the Belgian economy. This document, written by the consulting firm Smart Pharma Consulting, emphasises that pharmacy is the sector that invests most in r&d, that the increase in the employment rate in this sector exceeds the country's average and that Belgium is one of the few countries where the pharmaceutical industry provides the State with revenue higher than the national drug budget.

However, it suggests that greater efforts could be made on the part of the government in a country where drugs are among the least expensive in Europe, where the r&d costs are significantly higher than in other countries and where the time periods between approval and market launch are the longest in Western Europe.

The four companies have set out their hopes for meetings with the government, in the context of a state-industry platform, in which pharma.be is also taking part. The first meeting took place in December 2006 and the second is due in March.

This platform will enable the companies to discuss with the prime minister and the health and financial ministers, fiscal measures as well as the possibility of setting up temporary authorisation of use systems for drugs and price-volume contracts. It will also look at any measures to enable the market launch of drugs to be accelerated.