MSF urges EU to rid market of ‘avoidable suffering’ from SPCs
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned that the European Commission’s commitment to the supplementary protection certificate (SPC) system risks undermining its promise to improve drug accessibility.
The Commission outlined plans to improve accessibility to cheaper, generic drugs in its Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe, published yesterday, November 25.
In the document, the Commission said it would crack down on anti-competitive behaviour in the pharmaceutical industry and clear barriers to generics coming to market sooner.
MSF’s Access Campaign welcomed the document, but warned that the commitments risk “being hollow” due to the Commission’s support for an EU-wide supplementary protection certificate (SPC) system. SPCs allow patent owners to gain an extra period of marketing exclusivity on a drug, beyond the life of the original patent.
“The Commission’s strategy provides a historic opportunity to ensure the EU’s policies and legislation are aligned and geared towards access to essential medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics,” MSF said, continuing: “However, SPCs prolong the duration of a patent on a medicine up to five years, enabling companies to charge exorbitant prices for a longer period of time.”
Amaryllis Verhoeven, head of the Commission’s IP unit, said in June that a unitary SPC should follow the introduction of the long-awaited unitary patent system, scheduled for 2021.
“Once we have a unitary patent, we would also like to move to a unitary SPC … the problems that we see currently in the patent system are also replicated there—too many divergences,” Verhoeven said.
MSF warns that simplifying the SPC system in this way would only threaten greater access to affordable medicines.
“SPCs unnecessarily extend pharmaceutical corporations’ monopolies, which will keep lifesaving medicines out of people’s hands,” said Dimitri Eynikel, EU policy advisor for the MSF Access Campaign.
“We urge the European Commission to get rid of the SPC system that is nothing but an unnecessary cost for society, which may cause avoidable suffering or deaths,” Eynikel said.
The Commission published an analysis of the SPC system alongside the Pharmaceutical Strategy, finding that SPCs earned pharmaceutical companies an extra €37 billion in turnover. Overall, the system is “reasonably balanced”, the Commission found.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories sent like this straight to your inbox.
