Each year the Pharmaceutical industry spends over €40 million on influencing decision makers in the European Union, a recent report found.
The report highlights the grossly uneven playing field in which the gigantic 40 million
Euros is set against a combined sum of €3.4 million spent by civil society working directly on access to medicine issues.
The study also highlighted the lack of transparency within lobby activity, with many companies choosing not to disclose their lobbying expenditure, due to the voluntary nature of the Transparency Register. Due to this, the report estimates that the true amount could be closer to €90 million annually.
The pharmaceutical industry lobby has been linked to the EU’s move to enhance data protection which is resulting in delays to marketing cheaper generic medicines. The EU-India Free Trade agreement is one such example which has the potential to critically damage access to medicines for people in the developing world. The Student Stop AIDS Campaign, along with activists across the world, have been campaigning hard to remove the harmful clauses set out in the EU-India FTA.
This recent study, carried out by Corporate Europe Observatory and Health Action International, shows the lengths at which Big Pharma are prepared to go to to put profit before people.
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