Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-06-Speech-2-367"
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"en.20050906.36.2-367"2
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"Mr President, it is really important that children should be prescribed the right medicines in the correct dosage and in the right form. The Commission’s proposal is of major significance to children, parents and industry alike. Pharmaceutical companies must be given reasonable compensation for the research they carry out into paediatric medicines. As far as I am concerned, this compensation could even be generous, but a six-month extension of the patent protection is in many cases extremely big-hearted. According to a well-known British innovative company, research into paediatric indications generally costs some EUR 8 million. The returns of a six-month patent extension are a multiple of this, some EUR 200 to 300 million, and sums in excess of this have been mentioned for blockbusters.
I would therefore call for proportionality: three months, but with the possibility of adding another three months if the turnover is below EURÂ 100 million. Three plus three also adds up to six, but only for companies that really need it. Along with Mrs McAvan, I tabled these amendments that have been signed by 44 Members from Belgium, Estonia, France, Portugal, Greece Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In our view, the reward should be proportionate to the costs incurred. That is a very simple and fundamental principle. It would be unseemly to rake in enormous profits on the back of sick children. It is always good to remind ourselves of who ends up paying for this: the people taking the medicines and the insured.
The cost of health insurance is rising; medicines account for some 10% of total public health outgoings. The price of medicines need not become unnecessarily expensive. The money would be better spent on care than on nice little extras for the industry. Of course the pharmaceutical industry will lobby very energetically in favour of six months. Anything else, they say, would be bureaucratic and complex, but there is nothing bureaucratic about providing turnover figures that are already known anyway.
Looking at the pharmaceutical industry, I can see major problems ahead. There is too little in the way of innovation in Europe. That innovation does not come about by handing out extras to the pharmaceutical companies. Quite the reverse: real innovation is possible if we insist on added therapeutic value, and that is why I back the amendments tabled by Mrs Ferreira and the Group of the Greens."@en1
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