Greek pharmaceutical associations have warned that hospital medicines clawback reached 80.7% of relevant sales in the first half of 2025, setting a new high for one of the country’s main pharmaceutical-expenditure controls.
The Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (Σύνδεσμος Φαρμακευτικών Επιχειρήσεων Ελλάδος, SFEE) and PhARMA Innovation Forum Greece, PIF, said the first-half 2025 figure had deteriorated further compared with the same period in 2024. They argued that measures announced over the past two years had not contained hospital pharmaceutical expenditure.
Clawback is triggered when pharmaceutical expenditure exceeds the fixed public budget. For hospital medicines, the 80.7% figure is the effective repayment rate produced by application of the mechanism across the affected market. SFEE and PIF claimed that this meant the state was funding less than one-fifth of the value of innovative hospital medicines, with the rest returned by companies through the clawback scheme.
The associations describe the position as a structural financing challenge. Greece introduced clawback during the sovereign-debt crisis and financial-assistance programme period from 2010 to 2018, when public spending controls were tightened across the health system. SFEE and PIF said the mechanism had moved beyond its original emergency role and had become a permanent constraint on hospital medicines funding.
PIF president Kavita Patel, general manager of Roche Greece and Cyprus, said the figure confirmed earlier warnings about the sustainability of the system. SFEE president Olympios Papadimitriou, general manager of Novo Nordisk Greece and Cyprus, linked the level of clawback to a risk that future treatments will not reach Greek patients.
SFEE and PIF called for an institutional meeting with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance to develop a more sustainable and predictable pharmaceutical-expenditure system.
Budget-linked payback mechanisms are common in European medicines policy, although the Greek hospital rate is notable for its scale. At this level, the clawback materially changes the relationship between official price, invoiced sales and retained revenue, with direct implications for launch planning, supply continuity and access to high-cost hospital innovation.
Source: Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies and PhARMA Innovation Forum Greece
Link: Νέο αρνητικό ρεκόρ με clawback 80,7% στα νοσοκομειακά φάρμακα, απειλεί την καινοτομία και τουςασθενείς! (New negative record with 80.7% clawback on hospital medicines threatens innovation and patients)
Date: 15 June 2026
