Drugmakers are drawing up emergency plans to deal with the fallout from a potential Grexit, as the industry issued a stark warning that Greece’s exit from the euro could lead to severe shortages of life-saving medicines and unleash a public healthcare crisis.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has written to the European Commission to warn that the Greek medicine supply chain is more complicated, and more fragmented, than in other European countries, and therefore “particularly vulnerable” to disruption if Greece crashes out of the single currency. Several hundred wholesalers distribute medicines to Greek pharmacies.

Nearly all the country’s drug supplies are imported from abroad, and Greece owes international drug companies more than €1.1bn (£779m) in unpaid bills, according to EFPIA figures. The federation said its members have not been paid by Greek hospitals and state-run health insurer EOPYY since December. New figures are set to be published today.

At an emergency meeting of the Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies on Monday, international firms such as Roche, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi agreed to keep medicines flowing into Greece for the coming month.

At the same time, the industry lobbied the European Commission for support. Richard Bergström, EFPIA’s director-general, wrote to Vytenis Andriukaitis, the European health commissioner: “In the worst-case scenario of ‘Grexit’, we believe the integrity of the medicines supply chain may be in jeopardy, which would create a risk to public health.”

GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, Britain’s two biggest pharmaceutical companies, said they have been drawing up contingency plans to maintain medicine supplies to Greece. Both employ about 200 people each in the country, mainly sales staff, and said that they are currently operating as usual.



An AstraZeneca spokeswoman said: “We are carrying out detailed scenario planning ahead of the referendum, and developing contingency plans to account for all outcomes, including a potential Greek exit from the euro.”

Bergström said many drugmakers have been working on emergency plans to keep medicines flowing into Greece if the nearly bankrupt country defaults on its debts and leaves the euro, but worries that this may not be enough. He noted that European competition law prevents co-ordinated industry action.

He asked for a meeting with Andriukaitis and other commissioners to discuss these issues, some of which would require commission action, such as imposing temporary limits on drug exports from Greece.

Bergstrom warned that medicines shortages would be exacerbated by “excess parallel trade” that would emerge if Greece returned to the drachma, with rapid depreciation against the euro likely. This would create a big incentive to buy drugs cheaply in Greece and sell them at a higher price in other European countries. This is already happening on a smaller scale.

Bergström said “it is certain that any abnormal effective price reductions in Greece would spread around Europe”.

At the start of the Greek crisis five years ago, Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, the world’s biggest maker of insulin for diabetics, met with a storm of protest when it withdrew an insulin product after the Greek government ordered a 25% price cut in some medicines. The firm later resumed supplies after negotiating a higher price, saying it feared big price cuts in Greece could spread to other countries.

Even when medicines are available, many Greeks are struggling to pay for them. They have to pay 10-25% of the cost of prescription drugs, with the rest covered by the public healthcare system.