Belgian presidency calls for coordinated action against antimicrobial resistance

How do you envisage the creation of a product which you ideally don’t want to use? That was the focal point of the Belgian presidency’s high-level meeting on how the EU should coordinate its response to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from 6-8 May.

With antimicrobial-resistant infections killing over 35,000 people in Europe every year, AMR has emerged as an ongoing health crisis following COVID-19 – and thus a priority for the Commission’s pharmaceutical reform.

The research and development (R&D) pipeline appears bleak, with no discoveries of new classes of antimicrobials since the 1980s. Meanwhile resistance to existing antimicrobials has accelerated, creating a market failure that serves as an economic driver of AMR.

The meeting included a discussion on different incentives for the pharmaceutical industry. Participants agreed on the need to combine ‘push’ and ‘pull’ incentives (early-stage and market entry-stage) to address R&D market failures.

Several expressed reservations about Commission-proposed and industry-backed transferable exclusivity vouchers (TEVs), which grant a developer an additional year of regulatory data protection for one of their products or to sell it to another company that holds a market authorisation.

Christine Årdal, from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, presented the annual revenue guarantee, or ‘Netflix’ model. Included in the Parliament’s recently-adopted first reading of the Regulation of the pharmaceutical revision, it aims to prevent antimicrobial overuse by decoupling payment from consumption.

The ball is now in the Council’s court. Looking ahead to the upcoming Hungarian presidency, Secretary of State for Health, Peter Takács, did not commit to a specific incentive, expressing the government’s “openness to exploring all possibilities.” For Takács, joint procurement, mandatory stockpiling of narrow-spectrum antimicrobials and investing in Horizon Europe should also be considered. Last year, Hungary was one of 14 countries to write a letter opposing TEVs.

The next Council meeting to discuss the second compromise text on AMR incentives is set for the 28 and 29 May.

Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Vandenbroucke closed the event with the new AMR brief outlining prevention and control measures, following last year’s Council’s recommendation on EU AMR targets.

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