Big Pharma Lobbying in EU

In one of my previous post I have assumed that Big Pharma constantly lobbies different types of authorities and here we have very nice example concerning EU: Big pharma spends 40 million euros per year lobbying in EU. Not bad!

“The pharmaceutical industry lobby is spending more than 40 million euros annually to influence decision-making in the European Union, of which nearly half is spent on in-house lobbyists.

“With the "immense disparity between the affluence of public interest groups and the industrial lobby, it becomes even more difficult to level the policy playing field", the report notes. Furthermore, it adds that many pharmaceutical companies lobbying the European Commission on legislation fail to declare their activities.

 HAI Europe and CEO note that as registration to the transparency register is voluntary, many pharmaceutical companies choose not to declare their spend. If recorded properly, they claim that "expenditure on lobbying activities by the industry could be shown to be as high as 91 million euros annually, which would be more comparable with the lobby spending declared in the USA; the report estimates that 220 lobbyists are active in the EU on behalf of the sector.

 HAI Europe project officer Katrina Perehudoff said the pharmaceuticals industry "has a significant presence in Brussels, and is clearly spending considerable sums of money on lobbying. This information should be available so that decision makers have a clear idea of the level of industry activity – but at the moment we only have a partial picture.”

Well, you see that authorities are motivated to play on the side of Big Pharma. And they play on the side against Partisans of Death Valley.