“The pharmaceutical industry is the lung, it is the heart of Italian manufacturing growth,” said Marcello Cattani, president of Farmindustria, at the opening of the talk “Drugs, the challenge of competitiveness between innovation and sustainability,” describing the sector as one of the new strategic pillars of Italian industry. This point was also echoed by Adolfo Urso, Minister of Enterprises and Made in Italy, who included the health economy among the new growing sectors of Made in Italy, alongside the traditional 5As — food, clothing, furniture, automation, and cars.
PHARMACEUTICALS: THE STRATEGIC ENGINE OF MADE IN ITALY
“Over four and a half billion invested every year in science, clinical research, and industrial technology,” recalled Cattani, president of Farmindustria, explaining how today the sector represents one of the main industrial engines of the country. In 2025, the pharmaceutical sector reached 74 billion euros in industrial production and about 70 billion in exports, with employment growth of almost two percentage points compared to the previous year and an increasingly central role also in the Center-South, which has become “the primary reservoir of industrial production and exports.” The sector continues to support competitiveness, innovation, and industrial attractiveness in a particularly complex phase for the global economy. A scenario also highlighted by Minister Urso, who stressed how in 2025 — “a horrible year amid trade wars and armed conflicts” — Italian exports grew by 3.3% globally and by 7.2% towards the United States, “the best performance among all European countries.” According to the minister, this dynamic allowed Italy to reach Japan as the fourth largest exporting country worldwide.
USA AND CHINA ACCELERATE, EUROPE MUST REDUCE DELAYS
In a context where the United States is redefining its industrial and health strategy — also through the Most Favored Nation model, previously surfaced but brought back to the forefront with the Trump administration — the pharmaceutical sector finds itself in an increasingly intense global competition. “The United States has decided to change the global fate of research and development,” said Cattani, explaining how Washington is working to strengthen its industrial sovereignty and reduce external dependencies. At the same time, he added, “China has become a global player on par with the United States in clinical research,” while India and China remain central both for active ingredients and for various strategic raw materials. Hence the need, reiterated several times during the discussion, to reduce European dependence on external supply chains and to protect clinical research and innovation. The issue, however, is not only productive but also concerns the ability to quickly bring therapies to patients, especially in Europe, where regulatory slowness continues to represent one of the main competitive limitations. “In 2026, we do not have an early access mechanism for Italian citizens,” observed the president of Farmindustria, also citing the average approval and reimbursement times for drugs in Italy: “Today we are at an average of 439 days for national approval.” The issue also concerns patent protection at the European level and the payback system, which obliges pharmaceutical companies to cover part of the public spending overrun for drugs. This measure was defined by the president of Farmindustria as “a tax on top of taxes” because “the industry cannot structurally compensate for the resources of the public system.” The risk, therefore, would be to slow down investments and competitiveness in a sector that requires long times and strong resources for research and development.
HOW TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE
On how to maintain the attractiveness of the Italian system, the discussion brought together two levels: on one hand industrial policies and investments, on the other the ability to recognize the value of innovation within the healthcare system. For Minister Urso, it is necessary to continue protecting investments in research and innovation and to defend the issue of patents at the European level. The minister recalled how the health economy was included among the strategic sectors of the “Made in Italy 2030” plan and claimed the government’s work on industrial attractiveness. “The pharmaceutical industry has become a driving sector of our exports,” he said, also mentioning the investments started in Italy by Novo Nordisk and the simplification measures activated for large strategic investments. For the director of the International Relations Office of Aifa, Armando Magrelli, instead, it is necessary “to put the value of the drug back at the center and no longer talk about prices.” “We cannot create a dichotomy between price and value,” explained the director of Aifa’s International Relations Office, emphasizing how “the value of the drug is built from research onward.” According to the Aifa director, too rigid a separation between economic sustainability and innovation would risk compromising the sector’s investment and development capacity. In closing, the president of Farmindustria returned to the role of clinical research, defined as “essential,” and the need to better use health data to measure the real impact of innovation. The goal, he explained, is to overcome a purely accounting reading of pharmaceutical spending and instead evaluate the benefits produced on the healthcare system, from reducing hospitalizations to care planning. Hence the invitation to also culturally open the system to new technologies, to “demonstrate the value of every investment.”
