European pharma chiefs warn of competitive decline without urgent policy reforms

Nine of Europe's most prominent pharmaceutical executives have raised a collective alarm: the continent's regulatory pace and research funding levels are quietly ceding ground to American and Chinese rivals in the global race for medical innovation. Their warning is less a grievance than a reckoning — a reminder that competitive advantage in science, like trust, is easier to lose than to rebuild. The question now before European policymakers is whether they will treat this moment as a turning point or allow the slow drift to continue.