The Pharmaceutical Companies Association (Les Entreprises du Médicament, LEEM) has published Data et prospective – Économie du médicament 2025 (Data and outlook – medicine economy 2025), setting out its reading of the French medicines market and the pressures shaping pricing, reimbursement and industrial policy.
The report is framed around a central proposition: France must reconcile regulation, investment and attractiveness if it wants to preserve access to innovation while maintaining health-system sustainability. LEEM develops that position through indicators on market growth, reimbursement coverage, access to authorised medicines, expenditure control and the country’s industrial position.
The net regulated medicines market reached €27.7 billion in 2024, after a long period of stagnation around €23 billion between 2009 and 2019. LEEM attributes the return to growth since 2021 to health needs, innovation and indication extensions, but presents this recovery against a wider background of fiscal constraint and declining pharmaceutical competitiveness.
The access picture is presented as uneven. France makes available 60% of medicines authorised in Europe, below Germany at 89%, Italy at 83% and Spain at 71%. LEEM uses this comparison as one marker of France’s weakening position within the European medicines environment.
The reimbursement indicator points to a different feature of the system. Once products are covered, the share of medicine costs reimbursed to patients has increased over the past decade and now exceeds 90% when hospital medicines are included. LEEM presents this as a high level of financial protection, particularly for access to innovation, while questioning whether near-zero out-of-pocket spending can remain sustainable under current and projected social security deficits.
The expenditure-control section places medicines policy within the annual social security financing cycle. Negotiated price reductions by the Economic Committee for Health Products (Comité économique des produits de santé, CEPS) generated €856 million in savings in 2024, above the €850 million target. The targets rise to €1 billion in 2025 and €1.4 billion in 2026.
LEEM also records the scale of rebates and statutory paybacks. Conventional rebates reached €10.9 billion in 2024. The safeguard clause, which LEEM describes as a guardrail mechanism, yielded €1.63 billion in 2023 and €1.76 billion in 2024 after repeated reforms.
LEEM concludes that medicines policy is being shaped too heavily by annual savings targets, price reductions, rebates and safeguard-clause payments. It argues for a more stable settlement that makes expenditure control more predictable, maintains rapid access to innovation and improves France’s ability to attract pharmaceutical investment.
Source: LEEM, Pharmaceutical Companies Association
Link: Data et prospective – Économie du médicament 2025 (Data and outlook – medicine economy 2025)
Date: 7 May 2026
