Despite a decade of gradual growth, R&D spending in Europe outpaced by the US – with increasing competition from China, new data shows.
New research published today by EFPIA provides in-depth analysis of the economic footprint of the pharmaceutical industry in Europe, across Member States and compares Europe to other regions of the world. 
It shows a ‘strong and growing’ industry which contributed a total of €311bn[1] to the EU-27 economy in 2022. 


The pharmaceutical industry in Slovenia contributed 2.9 billion euros to gross added value in 2022 and supported 25,600 jobs across the entire economy.
 

The research shows that EU pharmaceutical R&D spending grew on average 4.4% per year between 2010 and 2022, from €27.8 billion to €46.2 billion. 
However, the data also provides further warning of the divergence in R&D spending between the EU and the other parts of the world, as Europe fails to keep pace with the growth seen in the sector in Asia and the US.
Over the same period, R&D spending growth in the US was 5.5%, and in China 20.7%.
In recent years, this growing gap in R&D investment between Europe, the US and China has correlated with a relative decline in the number of European new molecule entities (NME) - drugs with an active ingredient marketed for the first time – vital to R&D activity. The EU fell behind China for numbers of NME discovered in 2023. 


The report by PwC builds on research published in 2019. New figures show:

  • In 2022, the industry contributed 311 billion Euros to the EU - 2.0% of its GVA. 
  • The industry 2.3million jobs in the EU - a 2.1% increase year on year between 2016 to  2022. 
  • Driven by consistently high levels of research and innovation – and a GVA of 197,000 Euros per worker - the pharmaceutical industry in Europe is three times as productive as the European economy as a whole. 
    • Productivity per worker in the pharmaceutical sector is higher than in the economy as a whole in every EU country studied. 
    • However, the study also indicates that GVA per hour in the USA is double that of the EU.

This also applies to Slovenia, where the gross added value per employee in the pharmaceutical industry averaged 200,500 euros and was 335.9 percent higher than the average productivity of all industries between 2016 and 2022.

 The data shows the economic footprint and employment figures for every Member State.


 
EFPIA Director General, Nathalie Moll, said: “Economically, the sector is delivering for the EU. It continues to be central to Europe’s health and economic security, despite a growing number of constraints. 
Despite R&D spending growing slowly, the scale and pace of the downward trends in Europe’s global share of R&D investment shows that there is only a finite time to turn things around. 
Boosting European competitiveness to kickstart growth requires concerted, collective action; urgent implementation of a coherent life sciences strategy for Europe would be a good start to futureproofing the sector.”
The full report can be accessed here.
For more detailed information about individual Member States, see the accompanying slides here.