The Europe India Chamber of Commerce (EICC) has asked the European Union (EU) to take a balanced approach to the medicine stockpiling policy in Europe and see that the supply of Indian pharma products has access to the EU market.

In a letter addressed to the EU Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides, EICC, which promotes trade, investment, and economic relations between the EU and India, has warned the EU about the astronomical rise of healthcare cost in the EU as a result of the policy.  

EU policy on the supply of medicines

According to the new EU policy, if approved by the European Parliament Plenary, the EU will not take the supply of medicines from Asia and will relieve Europe's dependence on countries such as India and China when producing medicines.

EU wants to make stockpiling of certain medicines in Europe compulsory through a sort of European Emergency Pharmacy.  The Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety Committee of the European Parliament on September 17 adopted a resolution calling for the EU to become more self-sufficient in health issues by securing supplies, restoring local drug manufacturing and ensuring better EU coordination of national health strategies.

The new policy proposed by the resolution is likely to prove to be the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back and escalate the healthcare cost in the EU astronomically. Many EU countries that are already struggling to provide adequate healthcare to their citizens, may not be able to afford or sustain it for long. 

COVID-19 and its impact in the EU

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented health crisis and is having a major impact on European healthcare. 

The health infrastructure – hospitals, medical professionals, paramedical services and pharmaceuticals – all the segments of this vast network has been strained perhaps even much more than they were during the two World Wars that Europe had suffered.  

The only way for the EU and indeed the global community is to ward off the pandemic through an unprecedented level of global cooperation and coordination. 

India’s role

The pandemic has made global interdependencies more visible. It is therefore important that EU and India should work together to ensure a coordinated global response to this crisis. 

Right from the beginning of the pandemic, India has not only believed in the policy of global cooperation but acted on it in a very timely fashion. This Indian gesture has been widely acknowledged and appreciated by heads of states across the world. 

This is not the first time that India has stepped up on the global stage and shared its vital and indeed life-saving know-how with the global community, especially those countries and people who have been left behind in the race called globalisation.

Through its extremely competitively priced and yet high-quality medicines, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has played a stellar role for decades in ensuring that even those countries whose healthcare budgets are minimal can afford to take care of their citizens. 

Millions of people in different parts of the world have benefited from India’s ability to produce medicine at relatively low prices. Numerous global healthcare NGOs like Doctors Without Borders rely on Indian pharmaceutical products to carry out their life-saving activities in various parts of the world.

If it wasn’t for generics, even high-income countries could not afford the healthcare costs that they can today. The global healthcare has benefited hugely from the Indian pharmaceutical industry, and from generic drugs that the Indian pharmaceutical industry produces for the world. 

The EU capacity building to become self-reliant is commendable but in this globalised world when all countries are inter-dependent on medical supplies, do a blanket ‘ban’ or, shall we say, total ‘boycott’ of Indian pharma products in the EU market are justifiable? 

Will making Indian medicines ‘untouchable’ really help the EU’s healthcare industry? Will this policy in any way help the ongoing EU-India free trade negotiations? These are the issues that the European Commission, European Parliament and the governments of the EU member states need to ponder over.

(The writer is Secretary-General, Europe India Chamber of Commerce (EICC), Brussels. The views expressed are personal)