PM Mitsotakis meets with the heads of the international pharmaceutical manufacturers

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met on Wednesday with the heads of companies and unions’ that are members of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Traders (IFPMA) at the Maximos Mansion.

“The issues concerning European competitiveness are at the heart of our campaign positions ahead of the European parliamentary elections. I say this because, for us, for my government, as well as for the European People’s Party, this should be a top priority for the next round of the European elections. We are losing our competitiveness in Europe, we are failing to attract cutting-edge investments and are lagging behind in terms of high innovation indexes, certainly in comparison with the USA, and this is something that must be fixed,” the prime minister said.

“It is certain that we will put great pressure on other institutional bodies, mostly on the European Commission, to focus on these issues. Two reports are going to be discussed at the European Council, which relate to competitiveness and the operation of the single market, which we believe is very important because it sometimes does not work as well as we think,” Mitsotakis underlined.

On his part, the president of IFPMA and managing director of Pfizer, Albert Bourla noted: “One of the reasons we come to Greece is because Greece steadily supports innovation. At a European level, it is one of the countries we consider to have very clear positions on significant aspects of promoting innovation, such as patents and access to medicine. We want to send a message with our visit to this country, of how happy we are and how greatly we wish to cooperate with you”.