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Drug manufacturers, including Czech ones, filed a lawsuit with the EU Court of Justice over a directive

by AI | 10.Mar 2025 | Europe in brief AI

The directive promotes the principle that the polluter should pay for water purification. It requires the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries to finance new purification processes in urban wastewater treatment plants.

Pharmaceutical wholesale. Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa

Prague – Nine Czech pharmaceutical manufacturers are among the pharmaceutical companies that have filed a lawsuit at the EU Court of Justice over the waste directive. The Czech Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (ČAFF) announced this in a press release today. According to the directive, pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies should now financially contribute to wastewater treatment. Zentiva stated in its press release that higher production costs will make the production of some cheaper medicines economically unsustainable. The association estimates costs in the Czech Republic to be tens of billions of crowns.

“We support the Green Deal and the ambitions of the wastewater treatment directive, but we cannot accept the current plan for its implementation,” said Zentiva’s CEO Steffen Saltofte today. “The directive leads to an astronomical additional tax, which represents a disproportionate burden for the generic industry. We cannot finance it while operating in a highly regulated environment,” he added. As said by Zentiva’s Czech Republic General Manager Boris Sananes, implementing the directive in its current form will make many products economically unsustainable, and they will be pushed out of the market.

The directive enforces the principle that the polluter pays for water treatment. It requires the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries to finance new cleaning processes in urban wastewater treatment plants to remove so-called micropollutants. These microscopic substances enter the water from products that people consume, the body excretes them, and then they reach the wastewater treatment plants with the wastewater.

“Overall, we estimate investments in the introduction of quaternary treatment in the Czech Republic to amount to tens of billions of crowns. In addition to initial investments, the industry will also pay operational costs,” said the ČAFF Executive Director Filip Vrubel. Therefore, companies have called on member states to reconsider the impact of the directive. In addition to Zentiva, Czech manufacturers Accord, Adamed, Fresenius Kabi, Polpharma, Sandoz, Stada, Teva, and Viatris have joined. (March 10)