The executive is tackling drug shortages. Traveling to Ardèche on Tuesday on the site of the Aguettant pharmaceutical laboratory, Emmanuel Macron announced that around fifty drugs deemed “critical” would see their production chains repatriated to France in the coming years.
For half of them, the relocation will even be effective, or production will in any case be “significantly increased on national territory”, “in the coming weeks”, declared the Head of State. He cited in particular morphine, pediatric amoxicillin and six anti-cancer drugs. These relocations will cover the entire drug production chain, including “very often the active ingredient”, welcomed Emmanuel Macron.
Emphasis will be placed on these fifty products, the production of which will therefore have to be “absolutely (…) relocated” to France. But the government has identified a list of 450 drugs in total which are deemed “essential” and “on which we are not allowed to have weakness”. “In the months and years to come, we must absolutely secure the chains (of production of these 450 essential drugs), either by relocating completely or by diversifying and continuing to innovate,” said Emmanuel Macron. The exhaustive list was to be communicated Tuesday afternoon by the Minister of Health, François Braun.
During the presentation of the France 2030 plan, which set the main ten-year priorities for public action at the end of the health crisis, Emmanuel Macron had already mentioned his ambition to relocate the production chains of a certain number of critical drugs. He had pledged that France could again produce paracetamol on its soil by 2023. However, this active ingredient was not mentioned in Tuesday’s speech.
Emmanuel Macron also welcomed “a new partnership deal between the State and the pharmaceutical industry”, before announcing the creation “in the very next few days” of a one-stop shop dedicated to the relocation of essential drugs. This support will make it possible to go “much faster” in the deployment of industrial projects, which will also be allocated an envelope of 50 million euros from the State. “It’s the cost to pay to become independent again, it’s the consistency of our policy,” said the President of the Republic. The state will also define a “white drug plan”, in the most critical cases of shortage, and clinical trials should be simplified, to “go much faster” in the development of drugs.
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“Concretely, we want to move faster and stronger,” insisted Emmanuel Macron, adding that we wanted to act “at European level”. Paris will therefore carry “the ambition of relocation and the strengthening of our production capacities” at the level of the Union, in particular by defining “quantified objectives to combine the efforts of the Member States”, he noted. . Finally, the executive wishes to develop a section on “prevention”, to limit the use of drugs, and to accustom the French to a “more reasonable use” of these products.
These announcements come as the year 2022 was marked by many shortages, while more than 3,500 molecules were out of stock or at risk of rupture last year. According to the BVA study carried out for France Assos Santé in March 2023, 37% of French people have been faced with shortages in pharmacies, underlines the Elysée. The situation should remain tense for a while, warned the head of state: “We will still have emergencies in the coming months and years,” he warned.
This trip was the first in a series of presidential meetings devoted to strengthening French industrial and technological sovereignty, which will continue until next Monday. The Head of State will thus go to Chamatex on Tuesday, in Ardoix, which produces sneakers in France. He will then go to VivaTech, in Paris, on Wednesday, and will speak on the decarbonization of aviation on Friday. Emmanuel Macron thus intends to extend his communication offensive launched in May on the theme of reindustrialization in order to show that the page on pensions has been turned and that he is regaining control.
