The reciprocal importance of trading partnership between the US and the EU in the field of medicinal and pharmaceutical products has been once more acknowledged by the new transatlantic partnership for the secure supply of medicines signed by the Association for Accessible Medicines, the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association and Medicines for Europe. The partnership will support the respective markets for generic medicines by leveraging the respective strengths. The US, for example, has initiated several projects to reduce certain manufacturing dependencies, while the EU has launched the Critical Medicines Alliance to consider the options to strengthen manufacturing in Europe and create strategic partnerships to improve security of supply.
The partnership also aims to assess how the EU, the US and Canada could cooperate to reduce dependency from other regions in terms of supply of medicines, according to the recent calls from the European Parliament to increase EU-US cooperation and the 2023 EU-Canada Summit joint statement on strategic partnership. Key topics of collaboration are expected to include the security of medicines supply, the setup of solidarity-based responses to crises, and bilateral and multilateral regulatory cooperation.