The European Union has faced a decrease in the number of clinical trials of drugs on its territory due to the fact that pharmaceutical companies prefer to turn to the United States and China due to simpler regulatory systems. According to industry associations, for clinical studies in the European economic space, the rate has decreased from 22% in 2013 to 12% last year.
As a result of the decrease in the number of clinical trials in Europe, the number of patients registered to participate in them has also decreased. In 2023, within the EU, only 60 thousand patients participated, which is 20 thousand less than in 2018. Reduced funding affected different areas of medicine, including oncology, neurology, immunology, pediatrics, as well as issues of cellular and gene therapy.
According to separate data from the World Health Organization, the number of clinical trials in the region of the western Pacific Ocean has significantly increased over the last decade, reaching about 25 thousand cases in 2021 compared to 7400 cases ten years ago.
Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, raised this issue in his report on the competitiveness of the EU, in which he called for simplification and unification of regulatory systems and management of multinational research to attract a larger number of clinical studies on the territory of Europe.
