November 19th 2010

The Pharmaceutical Sector Fiona Lootvoet Sophie Poukens-­‐Renwart Ludovic Van Sinay

[ E C O N 2 3 7 2 – C o r p o r a t e S t r a t e g y a n d A n t i -­‐ T r u s t ]

1. Introduction It seems clear that the health of European citizens is an important topic that we have to care about. This is why medicines must be safe, accessible and affordable for everyone, and especially because the European population’s expenses continue to increase over the years. To introduce you to our pharmaceutical’s case, let’s begin with some characteristics of this market and, after that, with two key elements that the Commission has to take into account. For what concerns the characteristics of the market, we can say first that the pharmaceutical sector is R&D driven and there are on the supply side two types of companies: the originator companies, which are active in research and whose products are generally subject to patent protection, and manufacturers of generic products, which produce medicines that are equivalent to the original products after patent expiry of the pre-­‐existing original product. On the demand side, it is to be