Through a Decree, Italy implements a part of the transparency resolution. While transparency is moving forward in Italy, while Members of German Parliament are working on a motion in the same direction, while consequences of opacity have manifested themselves dramatically in recent months, France is once again signaling itself by its refusal to regulate the practices of the pharmaceutical industry.

Pioneer, Italy implements a part of the transparency resolution on medicines and health products adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in May 2019, through the publication of a Decree in the official journal of Italy. The Decree includes some important aspects related to transparency. In particular, the pharmaceutical companies seeking reimbursement from the National Health System, are requested to provide information on marketing, sales and reimbursement in other countries, including negotiated prices. Moreover, if the price of medicine asked for by drug company differs a lot from the one of the reference medicine already reimbursed, information should be provided by the company on its spending on research and development (R&D) programs, and the public contributions and incentives received on research and development (R&D) programs. In addition, clear and up to date information on the patent status of the concerned medicinal product. Finally, the pharmaceutical companies, as part of the final agreement for medicines reimbursed by the National Health System, will be obliged to provide annual reports regarding sales data, revenues and marketing expenses.

OTMeds congratulates the Italian government, as well as the author of this text Luca Li Bassi, former director general of the Italian drug agency (AIFA) to whom we awarded the transparency award (TransparencyAward2019) last February for his work on this Decree as well as around the historical resolution on transparency adopted a few months earlier by WHO Member States. Jointly with the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute in Geneva (IHEID), we held a webinar in May 2020, in which Luca Li Bassi spoke about the implementation of the transparency resolution.

While transparency is moving forward in Italy, while Members of the German Parliament (MPs) are working on a motion going in the same direction, while the consequences of opacity have manifested themselves dramatically in recent months, France is once again signaling itself by its refusal to regulate the practices of the pharmaceutical industry.