In Ozempic's home town they fear two things: a new set of tariffs, and a company in Kinsale
Denmark
, and the streets are empty.
The suburb north of Copenhagen looks like any quiet neighbourhood at first glance. It only takes a few minutes to walk the length of the main street, then you start to pass small red brick houses with well-kept gardens.
This isn't the type of place where you would expect to find one of Europe's biggest companies. Turn a corner, though, and you suddenly face a long road with row after row of sleek office buildings.
In a few short years Novo Nordisk has morphed from a relatively low-profile Danish manufacturer of diabetes medication, into a
pharmaceutical giant
, on the back of massive demand for its new weight-loss drugs,
Ozempic
and
Wegovy
.
READ MORE
The market value of the company surpassed the size of Denmark's entire economy last year and, for a period, Novo Nordisk was Europe's most valuable company, eclipsing LVMH, the French luxury brand conglomerate that includes Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tiffany.
'I think every second person works there,' says Dorte Soelmark, a woman who runs a bakery nearby Novo Nordisk's headquarters in Bagsværd.
The presence of the pharmaceutical giant in the neighbourhood is good for business, but she says there are downsides as well, from traffic bottlenecks to rising house prices.
'You leave at a certain time during the day, the traffic is just horrendous,' Soelmark says.
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Donald Trump says his tariff plan is working - but he now faces a vital call
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Dorte Soelmark, a worker in a bakery near Novo Nordisk's head offices in Bagsværd, Denmark
Jesper Chistiansen, who owns a men's clothes shop in a small outlet in the town, says Novo Nordisk's success has been great for Denmark.
'It's very good for the whole country, for the community in Bagsværd,' he says. 'But also it's very expensive to live here.'
The company has had a footprint in the Danish town since 1961, when it opened a laboratory. Its presence expanded significantly over the years. New offices for its headquarters were built a decade ago.
The company employs 77,000 people, half of whom work in Denmark between Bagsværd and Kalundborg, where it has plans to massively expand a manufacturing plant and other sites.
Novo Nordisk's stratospheric rise has been tied to huge demand for its blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. The anti-obesity medication inhibits the appetite and is administered by regular injections.
Popularised as a way to lose weight by Hollywood celebrities, there had been a global clamour for Ozempic, either prescribed by a doctor or through rapidly expanding black markets selling the jab online. Production has struggled to keep pace, leading to supply shortages.
Jesper Chistiansen says Novo Nordisk's success has been great for Denmark
Bumper corporate tax receipts from Novo Nordisk have insulated Denmark economically, but also left the public balance sheet exposed to any big downturn in the company's fortunes.
The pharma sector – one of Europe's big industrial beasts – is bracing itself for
United States president Donald Trump
to follow through on threats to levy huge tariffs on its exports to the US.
Trump has repeatedly talked about bringing jobs and manufacturing capacity created by US pharma multinationals in Europe back to the US.
To do this, the US president has threatened to put tariffs – which are effectively taxes on imports – of up to 200 per cent on pharma products coming across the Atlantic, in an attempt to force companies to make their medicines in the US.
The
European Union (EU)
and the Trump administration have negotiated a deal that would see
tariffs on most EU imports capped at 15 per cent
, to avoid a trade war.
The EU has pressed hard for any future import levies on pharma products to be capped at that blanket 15 per cent rate.
However, EU officials remain concerned that regardless of commitments in a preliminary deal, Trump could decide to put sweeping tariffs on pharma anyway down the line.
Novo Nordisk is on high alert waiting to see how things play out, like the rest of the industry.
Novo Nordisk's stratospheric rise has been tied to huge demand for its blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images
Separate to the threats coming from Washington, the Danish company is also concerned about what is going on in Kinsale, Co Cork. That's where US pharma giant Eli Lilly has been producing a rival diabetes and weight-loss drug, Mounjaro.
The US multinational has made up ground on Novo Nordisk, in the race for the biggest share of the highly profitable anti-obesity market.
Research pointing to its drug offering better results, plus successful trials in the development of new medication that can be taken as a daily pill, rather than a weekly injection, has set Eli Lilly up to potentially overtake Novo Nordisk in that race.
Fearful of falling behind, Novo Nordisk recently announced a corporate reshuffle. Chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, who had been with the company for more than three decades, was out.
In a statement announcing the shake-up this May, Novo Nordisk said its sales and profits had almost tripled during Jørgensen's tenure at the top. However, the decision was taken based on 'recent market challenges' and drops in the firm's share price, it said.
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Pharma companies unprepared for production shift amid US tariffs
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In an industry where so much of the focus is on developing new products, the ousting of Jørgensen is a cautionary tale. 'You can be flying one day and the next day you're down on the ground,' says one source in another pharma company.
In Belgium, the pharmaceutical industry is managing the fall off of a different type of recent boom in business.
The small country was a big producer of Covid-19 vaccines. A Pfizer factory in the north of the country in Puurs, worked full throttle during the height of the pandemic. One of the company's largest plants, it can produce 500 million vaccine doses a year.
Covid-19 vaccines accounted for a third of Belgium's pharma exports in 2022, according to a recent industry report. Pharma is one of Belgium's biggest exports, with the US accounting for about a quarter of that trade.
Trump's tariff agenda has caused serious uncertainty, says Liesbet Sommen, a centre-right MEP from Belgium. 'One day he says one thing and the next day he says another,' she adds. Huge numbers of people were employed by Belgium's 'pharma valley', so the stakes are high, she says.
Several sources in the industry say companies would likely have to suck up the cost of US tariffs, rather than pass part of them on. This is because they are locked into long-term contracts on pricing in the US. Accepting import taxes of 15 per cent would be a hit.
About a dozen of the EU's 27 states host sizeable pharma industries. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images
Nathalie Moll, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, says part of the problem is the intertwined nature of supply chains.
'There's no product that is made in one country. Sometimes products cross the Atlantic a couple of times before they are finished, so if you had tariffs on one side, and or the other side, you would end up adding cost to that product,' she says.
'There's really a danger of completely destabilising the supply of medicines for patients, wherever that might be in the world,' she says.
This is a point the industry has spent a lot of lobbying capital in Washington trying to drive home to the Trump administration.
About a dozen of the EU's 27 states host sizeable pharma industries, though few governments are feeling as exposed as Ireland. Pharmaceuticals account for a huge portion of the Republic's large flow of exports to the US.
Several US multinationals, Pfizer, Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and others, have manufacturing plants in Ireland. The sector employs tens of thousands of people and a handful of those companies alone account for a decent chunk of the State's corporate tax take each year.
When talking about pharma, Trump repeatedly singles out Ireland as having 'stolen' those jobs and revenues from the US.
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Irish exports climb to €134.4bn as US pharma sales surge
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Documents obtained by The Irish Times show the pharma industry has kept up that lobbying pressure, in both Dublin and Brussels. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images
Taoiseach Micheál Martin
has compared notes with several senior pharma executives about the best way to manage Trump's threats.
Martin spoke to Pfizer's global chief executive, Albert Bourla, on the phone the day after Trump announced his 'liberation day' tariffs on nearly all global trading partners in early April.
The Taoiseach outlined the thinking in the EU, while Bourla 'updated on discussions and contacts with the US administration,' a note of the call said.
Separate calls on the same day with Robert Davis, chief executive of MSD, and Joaquin Duato, the chief executive of J&J, covered much the same ground.
Tariffs weren't the only thing on the mind of the pharma executives, Davis also mentioned planned reforms of the EU's regulations governing the sector, according to a note taken of the call.
The proposed changes would cut back a current eight-year window pharma companies have to exclusively sell new drugs they produce, before cheaper generic competitors enter the market.
The idea is to tie more strings to the number of years of market dominance drugmakers enjoy over new medicines, to push companies to roll out medicines in smaller and poorer EU states more quickly.
The industry has been furiously lobbying national capitals to kill that element of the proposed overhaul.
A parallel lobbying campaign has been waged in Brussels, targeting MEPs in the European Parliament and the European Commission, the EU's executive arm that proposed the reforms.
Documents obtained by The Irish Times show the pharma industry has kept up that lobbying pressure, in Dublin and Brussels. The risk posed by Trump's potential tariffs has strengthened the industry's hand when arguing that now is not the time for such changes.
Employees are seen through windows as they work at the Novo Nordisk headquarters in Denmark. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images
In a letter on March 7th to a senior adviser of EU industry commissioner Stéphane Séjourné, Pfizer said there was an 'urgent need' for Europe to do more to be economically competitive, due to 'recent geopolitical developments'.
The commission's plan to cut back firms' regulatory protection over new medicines was 'not the right approach,' Michaela Hagenhofer, head of J&J's Irish operation, told
Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke
. The February 25th letter asked Ireland to join the Coalition of 'pro-innovation' countries opposing the changes at EU-level.
Samantha Humphreys, MSD's Irish director, urged the Government to maintain the 'status quo', in a February 11th letter. The correspondence was released to The Irish Times following Freedom of Information Act requests.
Further internal records reveal the Department of Health wanted Ireland to stick to its 'more balanced' view that some changes were needed, according to a March 18th briefing paper.
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Looming 'patent cliff' facing Big Pharma adds to sector's woes
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]
In the end the Taoiseach came down on the side of industry in the debate. Ireland switched positions and joined the camp of countries opposed to diluting the 'protection' firms had over new drugs they developed.
National capitals settled on keeping the eight-year window untouched, in an EU vote earlier this year. A pared back version of the new regulations are likely to be signed off in the coming months, in what will be a significant win for the pharma sector.
Many of the industry's top executives have probably spent recent months wishing they could command the same level of influence over policy in the White House, given the fight over tariffs that is likely still to come.
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The Irish Sun
a day ago
- The Irish Sun
The most common side effects of fat jabs revealed from vomiting to depression – and its different for each jab
FAT jabs do often sound like a magical quick fix to overeating and demanding hunger pangs. But the drugs can leave some users feeling seriously unwell and many in hospital. 2 Monitoring Facebook posts could be a useful way to spot side effects that might be unknown, scientists say (Credit: Getty) After scouring social media, scientists have found the most common side effects of the popular fat-busting meds. The US researchers looked at how people in the US were discussing GLP-1 drugs like They found that gut issues were the most frequently mentioned side effects overall, especially among users of semaglutide (the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic) and tirzepatide (the active ingredient in Mounjaro). Read more on fat jabs Mental health concerns like anxiety and depression were also raised, but far less frequently. The study, published in Meanwhile, Wegovy users mentioned depression more than any other group, with 1.57 per cent of posts referencing the symptom. The drugs, originally developed for Most read in Health But they've also been linked to less glamorous side effects, such as joint pain, fatigue, Despite the risks, experts say the drugs are still safe and effective for most patients. Weight Loss Jabs - Pros vs Cons They help control Roughly 1.5million people in the UK are now taking GLP-1 drugs, which have been hailed by some as game-changers in the fight against obesity. In the US, this number is even higher, with over 2 per cent of the population, approximately 4 million people, currently using these medications for weight loss. But health officials warn they are not a silver bullet and can come with side effects. The scientists found these effects varied by brand. Zepbound, a newer tirzepatide drug which is approved in the US but not the UK, was linked more often to high While Ozempic posts mentioned Scientists from the University of Maryland, who are behind the study, analysed nearly 60,000 unique public Facebook posts uploaded by US users of the medicines between 2022 and 2024, They used cluster analysis to map out which symptoms were often mentioned together. They found that vomiting, nausea and Posts about side effects spiked after major events including the US Food and Drug Administration approving Wegovy for teens, celebrity endorsements, and wider insurance coverage in the US. 2 Despite these increases, the proportion of people talking about side effects actually dropped over time. Scientists say monitoring social media could be a useful way to spot side effects that might be missed or underreported in clinical trials. But they warned that Facebook posts don't tell the full story as symptoms were self-reported, which means they can be exaggerated or incomplete. There is also no way to verify dosage, how long people were on the drugs, or even whether they were using genuine products. Everything you need to know about fat jabs Weight loss jabs are all the rage as studies and patient stories reveal they help people shed flab at almost unbelievable rates, as well as appearing to reduce the risk of serious diseases. Wegovy – a modified version of type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic – and Mounjaro are the leading weight loss injections used in the UK. Wegovy, real name semaglutide, has been used on the NHS for years while Mounjaro (tirzepatide) is a newer and more powerful addition to the market. Mounjaro accounts for most private prescriptions for weight loss and is set to join Wegovy as an NHS staple this year. How do they work? The jabs work by suppressing your appetite, making you eat less so your body burns fat for energy instead and you lose weight. They do this my mimicking a hormone called GLP-1, which signals to the brain when the stomach is full, so the drugs are officially called GLP-1 receptor agonists. They slow down digestion and increase insulin production, lowering blood sugar, which is why they were first developed to treat type 2 diabetes in which patients' sugar levels are too high. Can I get them? NHS prescriptions of weight loss drugs, mainly Wegovy and an older version called Saxenda (chemical name liraglutide), are controlled through specialist weight loss clinics. Typically a patient will have to have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, classifying them as medically obese, and also have a weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure. GPs generally do not prescribe the drugs for weight loss. 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Figures obtained by The Sun show that, up to January 2025, 85 patient deaths in the UK were suspected to be linked to the medicines.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Drugs like Ozempic aren't changing negative narratives around diet and weight
Friends keep asking me what I think about Ozempic . I know they're asking because I've written about food history, gender and eating disorders, but until recently I wasn't sure what I thought, wasn't sure that someone who has never had metabolic disease or lived in a body that attracted comment had any business having opinions about the drugs called GLP1 agonists. I support any development that undermines the idea that bodyweight has a moral aspect, or that individuals control the size of their bodies. We are shaped in every way by environment, society and genetics far more than by the small scope of personal choice within those determinants. Health is mostly determined by heredity and wealth. So if the new drugs stop people insisting that self-discipline and self-starvation are the answer to fatness, all to the good. [ Sarah Moss: 'I'm a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic' Opens in new window ] But I'm not sure they're generally helping us live better lives. I gather GLP1 agonists are good as diabetes medication – not an area in which I am qualified to opine. Their rising use for other purposes seems to be correlated to increasing media excitement about extreme thinness, particularly in women, which is demoralising to those of us who grew up with heroin chic and the worship of emaciation and have lived in the shadow of those ideals ever since. If the drugs are changing narratives about diet and weight, I'm not seeing it. There's no decline in mindless writing about and advertising of 'guilt-free' foods and 'guilty pleasures'. (What you put in your mouth has no bearing on your moral worth. The only sinful foods are those harmfully produced.) READ MORE I understand that these medications work by depriving people of pleasure in eating. I'd argue that pleasure is politically and ideologically important as well as nice, that without pleasure we fall prey to the idea that life is nothing but scarcity and survival, which leads quickly to the idea that life is a competition and weakness is failure, at which point you're well down the road to dark places we don't need to go. Taking expensive drugs to make daily life less fun so you take up less space doesn't sound to me like the kind of choice made by happy people in a functional society, though you could argue that unhappy people in a dysfunctional society – for example, fat people hoping to be paid, promoted and desired as much as their thinner colleagues in Europe today – might perfectly sensibly make such decisions. Getting thin to succeed in a fat-phobic society is still an understandable individual solution to a structural problem. And it seems to me that the big structural problem here is not that people are fat but that we have created and continue to promote a food system that makes most consumers unwell, and are now creating and promoting a regime of medication that, at great financial and personal cost, claims to counteract the effects of that food system. We're all being sold ultra-processed, intensively farmed food that makes us and our planet sick, and then being sold drugs that moderate the effect of that food on individual bodies but compound the harm to the environment. I am certain that the same shareholders profit from the manufacture and sale of the food that causes the problem and the drugs that treat it. Ozempic's popularity is a symptom and driver of social and economic injustice, and I wish we could spend some of its cost on systemic change instead None of which means that I blame any individual for making whatever decisions seem necessary to cope. I only note that the troubles that show up in our bodies rarely began there, and therefore the sustainable solutions won't begin with injections. There are countries that have been able to reduce the proportions of intensively produced and processed foods consumed by their populations, especially by children. There are examples of local, regional and national governments creating and sometimes imposing healthier and more sustainable environments, but it can't happen without at least some popular demand, and the established interests and beneficiaries of harmful systems will never want such change. So what I think about Ozempic is that its popularity is a symptom and driver of social and economic injustice, and I wish we could spend some of its cost on systemic change instead. We could subsidise the production and transport of a lot of fresh local produce and build a lot of playgrounds, sports facilities and bike lanes for what we lose paying pharmaceutical companies to heal us from their absence. And it would be much more fun.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
In Ozempic's home town they fear two things: a new set of tariffs, and a company in Kinsale
It's an overcast morning in the small town of Bagsværd, Denmark , and the streets are empty. The suburb north of Copenhagen looks like any quiet neighbourhood at first glance. It only takes a few minutes to walk the length of the main street, then you start to pass small red brick houses with well-kept gardens. This isn't the type of place where you would expect to find one of Europe's biggest companies. Turn a corner, though, and you suddenly face a long road with row after row of sleek office buildings. In a few short years Novo Nordisk has morphed from a relatively low-profile Danish manufacturer of diabetes medication, into a pharmaceutical giant , on the back of massive demand for its new weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy . READ MORE The market value of the company surpassed the size of Denmark's entire economy last year and, for a period, Novo Nordisk was Europe's most valuable company, eclipsing LVMH, the French luxury brand conglomerate that includes Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tiffany. 'I think every second person works there,' says Dorte Soelmark, a woman who runs a bakery nearby Novo Nordisk's headquarters in Bagsværd. The presence of the pharmaceutical giant in the neighbourhood is good for business, but she says there are downsides as well, from traffic bottlenecks to rising house prices. 'You leave at a certain time during the day, the traffic is just horrendous,' Soelmark says. [ Donald Trump says his tariff plan is working - but he now faces a vital call Opens in new window ] Dorte Soelmark, a worker in a bakery near Novo Nordisk's head offices in Bagsværd, Denmark Jesper Chistiansen, who owns a men's clothes shop in a small outlet in the town, says Novo Nordisk's success has been great for Denmark. 'It's very good for the whole country, for the community in Bagsværd,' he says. 'But also it's very expensive to live here.' The company has had a footprint in the Danish town since 1961, when it opened a laboratory. Its presence expanded significantly over the years. New offices for its headquarters were built a decade ago. The company employs 77,000 people, half of whom work in Denmark between Bagsværd and Kalundborg, where it has plans to massively expand a manufacturing plant and other sites. Novo Nordisk's stratospheric rise has been tied to huge demand for its blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. The anti-obesity medication inhibits the appetite and is administered by regular injections. Popularised as a way to lose weight by Hollywood celebrities, there had been a global clamour for Ozempic, either prescribed by a doctor or through rapidly expanding black markets selling the jab online. Production has struggled to keep pace, leading to supply shortages. Jesper Chistiansen says Novo Nordisk's success has been great for Denmark Bumper corporate tax receipts from Novo Nordisk have insulated Denmark economically, but also left the public balance sheet exposed to any big downturn in the company's fortunes. The pharma sector – one of Europe's big industrial beasts – is bracing itself for United States president Donald Trump to follow through on threats to levy huge tariffs on its exports to the US. Trump has repeatedly talked about bringing jobs and manufacturing capacity created by US pharma multinationals in Europe back to the US. To do this, the US president has threatened to put tariffs – which are effectively taxes on imports – of up to 200 per cent on pharma products coming across the Atlantic, in an attempt to force companies to make their medicines in the US. The European Union (EU) and the Trump administration have negotiated a deal that would see tariffs on most EU imports capped at 15 per cent , to avoid a trade war. The EU has pressed hard for any future import levies on pharma products to be capped at that blanket 15 per cent rate. However, EU officials remain concerned that regardless of commitments in a preliminary deal, Trump could decide to put sweeping tariffs on pharma anyway down the line. Novo Nordisk is on high alert waiting to see how things play out, like the rest of the industry. Novo Nordisk's stratospheric rise has been tied to huge demand for its blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images Separate to the threats coming from Washington, the Danish company is also concerned about what is going on in Kinsale, Co Cork. That's where US pharma giant Eli Lilly has been producing a rival diabetes and weight-loss drug, Mounjaro. The US multinational has made up ground on Novo Nordisk, in the race for the biggest share of the highly profitable anti-obesity market. Research pointing to its drug offering better results, plus successful trials in the development of new medication that can be taken as a daily pill, rather than a weekly injection, has set Eli Lilly up to potentially overtake Novo Nordisk in that race. Fearful of falling behind, Novo Nordisk recently announced a corporate reshuffle. Chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, who had been with the company for more than three decades, was out. In a statement announcing the shake-up this May, Novo Nordisk said its sales and profits had almost tripled during Jørgensen's tenure at the top. However, the decision was taken based on 'recent market challenges' and drops in the firm's share price, it said. [ Pharma companies unprepared for production shift amid US tariffs Opens in new window ] In an industry where so much of the focus is on developing new products, the ousting of Jørgensen is a cautionary tale. 'You can be flying one day and the next day you're down on the ground,' says one source in another pharma company. In Belgium, the pharmaceutical industry is managing the fall off of a different type of recent boom in business. The small country was a big producer of Covid-19 vaccines. A Pfizer factory in the north of the country in Puurs, worked full throttle during the height of the pandemic. One of the company's largest plants, it can produce 500 million vaccine doses a year. Covid-19 vaccines accounted for a third of Belgium's pharma exports in 2022, according to a recent industry report. Pharma is one of Belgium's biggest exports, with the US accounting for about a quarter of that trade. Trump's tariff agenda has caused serious uncertainty, says Liesbet Sommen, a centre-right MEP from Belgium. 'One day he says one thing and the next day he says another,' she adds. Huge numbers of people were employed by Belgium's 'pharma valley', so the stakes are high, she says. Several sources in the industry say companies would likely have to suck up the cost of US tariffs, rather than pass part of them on. This is because they are locked into long-term contracts on pricing in the US. Accepting import taxes of 15 per cent would be a hit. About a dozen of the EU's 27 states host sizeable pharma industries. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images Nathalie Moll, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, says part of the problem is the intertwined nature of supply chains. 'There's no product that is made in one country. Sometimes products cross the Atlantic a couple of times before they are finished, so if you had tariffs on one side, and or the other side, you would end up adding cost to that product,' she says. 'There's really a danger of completely destabilising the supply of medicines for patients, wherever that might be in the world,' she says. This is a point the industry has spent a lot of lobbying capital in Washington trying to drive home to the Trump administration. About a dozen of the EU's 27 states host sizeable pharma industries, though few governments are feeling as exposed as Ireland. Pharmaceuticals account for a huge portion of the Republic's large flow of exports to the US. Several US multinationals, Pfizer, Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and others, have manufacturing plants in Ireland. The sector employs tens of thousands of people and a handful of those companies alone account for a decent chunk of the State's corporate tax take each year. When talking about pharma, Trump repeatedly singles out Ireland as having 'stolen' those jobs and revenues from the US. [ Irish exports climb to €134.4bn as US pharma sales surge Opens in new window ] Documents obtained by The Irish Times show the pharma industry has kept up that lobbying pressure, in both Dublin and Brussels. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images Taoiseach Micheál Martin has compared notes with several senior pharma executives about the best way to manage Trump's threats. Martin spoke to Pfizer's global chief executive, Albert Bourla, on the phone the day after Trump announced his 'liberation day' tariffs on nearly all global trading partners in early April. The Taoiseach outlined the thinking in the EU, while Bourla 'updated on discussions and contacts with the US administration,' a note of the call said. Separate calls on the same day with Robert Davis, chief executive of MSD, and Joaquin Duato, the chief executive of J&J, covered much the same ground. Tariffs weren't the only thing on the mind of the pharma executives, Davis also mentioned planned reforms of the EU's regulations governing the sector, according to a note taken of the call. The proposed changes would cut back a current eight-year window pharma companies have to exclusively sell new drugs they produce, before cheaper generic competitors enter the market. The idea is to tie more strings to the number of years of market dominance drugmakers enjoy over new medicines, to push companies to roll out medicines in smaller and poorer EU states more quickly. The industry has been furiously lobbying national capitals to kill that element of the proposed overhaul. A parallel lobbying campaign has been waged in Brussels, targeting MEPs in the European Parliament and the European Commission, the EU's executive arm that proposed the reforms. Documents obtained by The Irish Times show the pharma industry has kept up that lobbying pressure, in Dublin and Brussels. The risk posed by Trump's potential tariffs has strengthened the industry's hand when arguing that now is not the time for such changes. Employees are seen through windows as they work at the Novo Nordisk headquarters in Denmark. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/ AFP via Getty Images In a letter on March 7th to a senior adviser of EU industry commissioner Stéphane Séjourné, Pfizer said there was an 'urgent need' for Europe to do more to be economically competitive, due to 'recent geopolitical developments'. The commission's plan to cut back firms' regulatory protection over new medicines was 'not the right approach,' Michaela Hagenhofer, head of J&J's Irish operation, told Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke . The February 25th letter asked Ireland to join the Coalition of 'pro-innovation' countries opposing the changes at EU-level. Samantha Humphreys, MSD's Irish director, urged the Government to maintain the 'status quo', in a February 11th letter. The correspondence was released to The Irish Times following Freedom of Information Act requests. Further internal records reveal the Department of Health wanted Ireland to stick to its 'more balanced' view that some changes were needed, according to a March 18th briefing paper. [ Looming 'patent cliff' facing Big Pharma adds to sector's woes Opens in new window ] In the end the Taoiseach came down on the side of industry in the debate. Ireland switched positions and joined the camp of countries opposed to diluting the 'protection' firms had over new drugs they developed. National capitals settled on keeping the eight-year window untouched, in an EU vote earlier this year. A pared back version of the new regulations are likely to be signed off in the coming months, in what will be a significant win for the pharma sector. Many of the industry's top executives have probably spent recent months wishing they could command the same level of influence over policy in the White House, given the fight over tariffs that is likely still to come.
