EU PERSPECTIVES - Europe's lawmakers are pushing to create a single "trial union" by merging 27 national systems and speeding up how new medicines are tested, with approval times of clinical trials set to fall to 75 days. But pharmaceutical companies warn the EU is still falling behind, demands approvals in weeks, not months. Read more

EURACTIV - Belgium's biotech sector has the science but not the scale, according to a new PwC whitepaper, which argues that the country must operate as one ecosystem if startups are to grow. Read more

EU PERSPECTIVES - Europe's share of global clinical trials has been cut in half in just a decade, while China has surged ahead. As Ireland takes over the EU presidency on Wednesday, Dublin is betting that faster drug approvals, biotech reforms and health investment can restore Europe's competitiveness — and determine how quickly patients get...

EURACTIV - Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has told policymakers he wants to restart the R&D Biopharma platform after the summer. He played down talk of crisis, a day after warning – at the anniversary of Novartis's Puurs site in Belgium – that Europe is losing ground to the United States and China. Read more

EU PERSPECTIVES - Two European Parliament committees have moved to delete the Biotech Act's most contested measure: a proposed 12-month extension of market protection for biotech medicines. Read more

EU PERSPECTIVES - Cardiovascular disease kills around 1.7 million Europeans every year, yet the EU has never had a dedicated strategy to tackle it. That is now changing with the Safe Hearts Plan. But as lawmakers backed the initiative on Wednesday, its parliamentary rapporteur warned that the final compromise fell short of her ambitions on tobacco...

EURACTIV - Dementia experts from 12 countries have signed a policy paper urging Brussels to give dementia its own framework, modelled on the €4 billion Beating Cancer Plan. Read more

EU PERSPECTIVES - Patients could pay the price as MEPs vote to delay who foots the bill for cleaning Europe's water. Parliament backed a temporary suspension of new costs for drugmakers and cosmetics firms. The vote split the assembly, pitting fears of medicine shortages against warnings that citizens will pay for pollution instead. Read more

EURACTIV - Belgium used the 16th June meeting of EU health ministers in Luxembourg to press for a united European front on medicine prices, urging member states to coordinate their response to US "most favoured nation" (MFN) pricing demands. Read more

EU PERSPECTIVES - It kills nearly ten million people a year and is expected to rise sharply in the coming decades. Cancer has for the first time been elevated to the top tier of global political priorities. G7 leaders issued an unprecedented heads-of-state declaration dedicated solely to the disease. Read more