June 24, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
FRANKFURT, Germany – As the world and the pharma industry looks to figure out what Britain’s exit of the European Union means economically, Germany-based Merck KgaA )said it has no immediate plans to reduce its U.K. presence or its workforce there.
The company told MarketWatch it was too early to determine what the long-term implications of the so-called Brexit would have on the company’s future in the U.K. Merck currently employs 1,400 people in the U.K. and 5,000 globally, according to MarketWatch.
Merck said it regretted a slight majority of Britons voted to exit the European Union on Thursday. The company said it believes the political consequences of Britain’s exit will be far more serious than the economic impact.
“What we can say is that remaining in the EU would have certainly made things easier for everyone in the long term,” Merck told MarketWatch in a statement.
While there are questions as to what Brexit means for those companies, there will likely be some negative impact on pharma research as U.K. researchers lose access to E.U.-backed grants. According to Politico, Britain has been a net receiver of science funding from the E.U. Additionally, Politico noted there are numerous immigrant researchers working in British pharma companies who are in-country under E.U. migration laws. With Britain seceding from the E.U., the fate of those immigrant workers are up in the air.
Merck is not alone in its concerns over what the Brexit will mean to the pharma industry. A large majority of pharma companies in Europe were opposed to Britain exiting the E.U. This morning several companies expressed their disappointment in the vote, but all said it was too early to tell what the departure of the world’s fifth-largest economy would mean.
London-based AstraZeneca said it would have been better had Great Britain remained in the European Union, an economic partnership it has been part of since the early 1970s, Reuters reported in a brief this morning. Despite the exit, popularly known as Brexit, AstraZeneca officials said the company “aims to safeguard competitiveness of life sciences industry and speed of patient access to innovative medicines,” Reuters said.
On the continent itself, Swiss-based Roche told Reuters it was too early to determine what the potential impact of the Brexit will be. However, in the meantime, Roche said the “key priority is to ensure that UK environment continues to support scientific innovation and speedy access of innovative medicines for patients,” Reuters noted.
Novartis AG , also based in Basel, Switzerland, told Reuters that it was too early to determine how the Brexit would impact the industry. In the short term, Novartis said it “expects no significant impact on activities and businesses from Brexit vote as the mechanisms and measures for the exit still must be defined.”
One mechanism that will have to be figured out as a result of the Brexit is regulatory rules. Currently companies can file for market authorization with the London-based European Medicines Agency. Approval from that body gives companies the authority to market their drugs throughout the E.U. member nation bloc. With Britain’s withdrawal, companies will have to file for authorization with Britain’s Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
“Pharmaceutical companies across Europe face considerable uncertainty at the prospect of the UK leaving the EU. Brexit has the potential to impact on regulation, the status of the EMA, finance, employment, the transfer of personal data and the European research ecosystem,” the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations said in a statement to Reuters earlier this year.
