Big Pharma spends over 40 million euros a year lobbying in the EU

New research reveals that the pharmaceutical industry lobby is spending more than 40 million euros ($530.5 million) annually to influence decision making in the European Union – of which nearly half is spent by drug manufacturers on in-house lobbyists.

According to these findings, civil society organizations active on EU medicines issues, on the other hand, spend a combined 3.4 million euros a year. With the immense disparity between the affluence of public interest groups and the industrial lobby, it becomes even more difficult to level the policy playing field.

The report, titled Divide & Conquer: A look behind the scenes of the EU pharmaceutical industry lobby, produced by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and Health Action International (HAI) Europe, surveyed the entries made by pharmaceutical companies and their representatives in the EU’s lobby Transparency Register to find out how much the industry claimed to spend on lobbying.