Why pharma manufacturers are still investing in Europe

Undeterred by tariffs and planetary competition, pharma manufacturers are seeing an accidental successful Europe and continuing to put accordingly.

Europe’s stock of planetary pharma manufacturing has declined drastically successful the past 25 years. European progressive pharmaceutical constituent (API) cause maestro files, the documents connected APIs submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), fell from 42% of planetary filings successful 2000 to conscionable 10% successful 2023 according to US Pharmacopeia’s medicine proviso map.

Drug shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare the continent’s manufacturing shortfall. To combat this, much precocious the EU Pharma Package, a projected overhaul of Europe’s pharmaceutical law, was agreed upon by the Council of the European Union and European Parliament and present needs to beryllium formally endorsed by some earlier it tin beryllium adopted.

The agreed bundle includes a proviso allowing EU countries to necessitate companies to proviso medicines capable to conscionable diligent needs oregon different suffer selling and information protections. It besides reduces the existent 2 years of selling extortion to 1 twelvemonth — retaining 8 years of information extortion — portion expanding the Bolar exception, which deals with patent protection. This enlargement makes developers’ proprietary information disposable to others to guarantee generics and biosimilars tin beryllium launched instantly aft intelligence spot rights expire.

Some experts question if these measures tin pb to meaningful change. However, declaration improvement and manufacturing organisations (CDMOs) successful Europe and overseas are making important investments successful European manufacturing. They accidental galore factors, from unforgiving regulatory standards to planetary commercialized tensions—often blamed for the continent’s conflict to support up with manufacturing hubs abroad— whitethorn successful information contiguous opportunities for growth.

In April 2025, 32 pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Roche, cosigned a missive to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen threatening to propulsion retired €16.5bn ($18.75bn) of planned concern successful Europe implicit the adjacent 3 years owed to dissatisfaction with the EU’s regulatory model and interest astir declining investment.

Nonetheless, manufacturing projects proceed to emerge. In October 2025, CDMO AGC Pharma Chemicals, a European subsidiary of the Japanese AGC Group, inaugurated a caller installation to nutrient highly potent APIs successful Barcelona, Spain. AGC acquired the works from Boehringer Ingelheim successful 2019 and invested implicit €100m ($119m) to summation productive capacity, seeking to usage the works to service European and US customers, according to Takuma Yamamoto, manager of strategical readying and planetary selling astatine AGC Pharma.