An emergency trip. The Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, and the Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, Marc Ferracci, went to Lisieux in Calvados this Monday, October 14, to one of Sanofi’s production sites. The French pharmaceutical giant announced on October 11, in a press release, that it had started negotiations with the American investment fund CD & R “for the potential sale of a 50% controlling stake in Opella”, its health subsidiary. general public, which notably produces Doliprane, one of the best-selling brands of paracetamol in France.
Sanofi had already announced its intention to shed its division in charge of food supplements and drugs that can be sold without a prescription. Nevertheless, a little less than four years after the start of the health crisis triggered by covid-19, which highlighted France’s strategic dependence on foreign supply chains, the news had the effect of a bomb. On the sidelines of his visit to the Paris Motor Show, President Emmanuel Macron wanted to reassure, indicating that the State had “the instruments to guarantee that France is protected” against a disruption in supply.
Stop the transfer
From the Lisieux site, the Minister of the Economy raised “the possibility of public shareholding and participation in the governance” of the company as part of an agreement on the preservation of jobs and the maintenance factories in France. In a forum at the initiative of the socialist deputy for Eure, Philippe Brun, 130 PS parliamentarians call on the executive to go further and take up the “Montebourg decree” of 2014, which extends the sectors of public health to public health. strategic activity subject to prior authorization from the government before any partial or total transfer. In short: these elected officials are asking the State to block the sale of the Doliprane brand to Americans. On BFMTV, Antoine Armand made it known that he would not refrain from activating this mechanism, “without extremely strong guarantees” from the investor.
“The minister talks to us about vigilance, what we want are actions,” storms to the Public Senate Patrick Kanner, the leader of the socialists in the Senate. “I am a man from the North, I have seen so many commitments on industrial issues of this kind which were not respected… We cannot have suffered what we suffered for three years with covid- 19 and accelerate the commercialization of essential medicines,” sighs the senator.
Questioned about this issue, the senator of Charente-Maritime (related LR) Corinne Imbert, rapporteur for the health branch of the Social Security budget, said she was “scandalized”. Pharmacist by profession, the senator from Vienne (related LR) Bruno Belin evokes “an aberration”: “We are told that manufacturing will remain in France, but in any case, we will lose control of this tool. It is difficult to imagine that an American investment fund would be attentive to the preservation of the French health system,” he warns. “If there must be a contract with a commitment from the investment fund, the State must imperatively enter into the structure. This can change the situation,” insists centrist senator from Calvados Sonia de la Provôté, who chaired a commission of inquiry launched in 2023 by the Senate into drug shortages.
Relocate production lines
Paracetamol is one of the most consumed drugs in France. In 2022, Sanofi boasted of having released 424 million boxes of Doliprane from its factories, an increase of 19% compared to its pre-crisis production. For the record: in 2020, the government was forced to impose limitations on the number of boxes delivered to pharmacies to avoid supply disruptions during the covid-19 epidemic.
It must be said that since 2009, the active ingredient in Doliprane has ceased to be produced on European soil. Today, Sanofi factories located in France only package paracetamol, which also requires specific know-how. However, two production sites are under construction in France: the Ipsophène factory in Toulouse, which should open early next year, and the Seqens factory in Roussillon, in Vienne, which should start producing in 2026 .
But the relocation of manufacturing lines, despite the proactive speeches of previous governments, promises to be rather laborious. According to a report carried out by the Senate commission of inquiry, only 18 projects financed by the France 2030 recovery plan concern the relocation of medicines, and only five concern so-called “strategic” molecules.
“We notice that the large laboratories are refocusing their strategy towards innovation, that is to say on what has the greatest added value, and therefore what is likely to bring them the most,” explains Sonia of the Provôté. “Often, these are therapeutic niches, but they are also the drugs of tomorrow. The risk is to fall behind in trying to rebuild value chains for everyday medicines, to the detriment of the industrial tools that we must build for treatments of the future.”
Commercial interests
To find a fair balance, the report of the Senate commission of inquiry proposed making public aid and tax incentives conditional on commitments on the production of medicines. “Sanofi is 1.5 billion in public aid in ten years. However, in Pasteur’s country, they have not been able to release a vaccine against covid-19! », tackles the former communist senator from Val-de-Marne Laurence Cohen, rapporteur of the commission of inquiry. “When we spend so much public money, we have the right to expect a minimum return on investment. »
“The sale of Doliprane to the Americans illustrates the problem with the French drug. The leaders of Sanofi explain that they are going to bring in money to finance their research, because today, by pushing down the price of the drug, not only are the laboratories less and less interested in the market French, but they also find it increasingly difficult to finance their development activities. Result: we sell the family jewels! », Develops Bruno Belin.
During the hearings of the commission of inquiry, representatives of pharmaceutical laboratories and large groups repeatedly sounded the alarm about prices considered too low in France, risking leading to the cessation of the marketing of certain so-called “mature” drugs, those whose patents have expired, and whose level of profitability is no longer sufficient in the eyes of manufacturers. “They are not losing money, they only consider that they no longer earn enough, but medicine is not a commodity like any other,” annoys Laurence Cohen. Sanofi’s Opella subsidiary, with a growth rate of 6.3%, also achieved 5.2 billion euros in turnover in 2023.
“The levers of constraint exist, the State has the power to avoid certain excesses, but we can clearly see that they never go beyond threats so as not to displease industrialists,” continues Laurence Cohen. In favor of the creation of a “public medicine center”, this former senator refers to one of the proposals of the commission of inquiry to avoid crisis situations: the creation of a “general medicine secretariat”, directly placed under the authority of the Prime Minister, and able to manage “the production of a restricted list of critical medicines”.
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