There is great concern on the part of the pharmaceutical indusattempt about the economic and industrial impact of the EU wastewater directive, which threatens to place a disproportionate burden on companies. The EU Commission is declared to have overestimated the environmental impact of pharmaceuticals by a factor of four and underestimated the costs to be incurred, which would be five to ten times higher. This would result in a tax of around 10 billion per year for pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies in Europe, instead of the 1.2 billion originally planned in the impact assessment. A real contradiction pointed out by Marcello Cattani, President of Farmindustria, and Michele Uda, Director General of Egualia, during the hearing at the Senate’s EU Policies Commission, where the alarm was once again sounded over the legislation that has been in force since January 2025 ‘which creates waste water treatment standards for the removal of micropollutants unsustainable’.
The pharmaceutical indusattempt’s demands on Europe
The Italian pharmaceutical indusattempt chain “reiterates the required to resolve the critical issues contained in the EPR (Extfinished Producer Responsibility) system, which, if introduced without modifys, risks irreversibly compromising the sustainability of the sector and exacerbating the phenomenon of drug shortages, in contradiction with other initiatives of the European Union itself.” “In a global context of fierce competition, geopolitical and trade tensions and a structural increase in operating costs of 30% compared to 2021,” the pharmaceutical indusattempt recalls, “Europe has already lost a lot of ground compared to the other major global macro-systems and is implementing measures such as the review of pharmaceutical legislation that will increase the gap with its main competitors.
Appeal to suspfinish the application of the Directive
This is why Farmindustria and Egualia inquire the government to continue to strongly support in all available fora – starting with possible amfinishments to the Environmental Omnibus recently presented by the EU Commission – the required to suspfinish the application of the Directive in order to allow a new impact assessment by the deadline of 31 December 2028 for the enattempt into force of the EPR scheme.
The indusattempt also urges the adoption of principles to safeguard access to medicines and the competitiveness of the pharmaceutical indusattempt by applying the rules to all producers of micropollutants to contribute proportionately to their removal and by adopting a method of calculating contributions agreed upon by indusattempt representative bodies.
The last request concerns the establishment of a single producer responsibility organisation per Member State, controlled by producers subject to EPR.
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