EFPIA welcomes the EU’s continued efforts to strengthen trade ties with strategic partners at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty and pressure on supply chains. Closer EU-India trade ties would be particularly important in the life sciences sector, helping advance innovation and improving patient access to medicines.

Advancing both EU competitiveness and the EU’s trade diversification agenda requires meaningful steps. While the EU-India FTA presents opportunities, such as the tariff elimination on most EU pharmaceutical exports, other elements in the FTA will require sustained engagement from the EU to effectively deliver meaningful improvement for European companies.

In particular, provisions on the protection of regulatory data represent the basis for continued EU engagement with India to ensure the implementation of an effective regulatory data protection system that will support an enabling biopharmaceutical innovation ecosystem in India.  

At the same time, in the absence of provisions on government procurement, maintained EU-India engagement is necessary to address the challenges European companies are faced with due to localisation policies introduced in recent years.

India offers significant long-term potential for healthcare collaboration, innovation and manufacturing partnerships. EFPIA and its members remain committed to supporting sustained engagement between the EU and India to address these outstanding issues and strengthen the biopharmaceutical sector.