PAREA's Biotech Act advocacy featured in POLITICO's Morning Health Care

POLITICO's Morning Health Care newsletter highlighted PAREA's work on the EU Biotech Act on August 26, in a piece titled "Spotlighting mental health innovation in the Biotech Act."

The newsletter's "Driving the Day" section covered PAREA's central message to EU lawmakers: mental health innovation needs to be an explicit focus of the Biotech Act. The Act aims to strengthen Europe's competitiveness by incentivizing research and medical investment, and PAREA is calling on MEPs to make sure mental health is part of that push.

The timing matters. Parliamentarians are spending the final days of summer working through the 200 pages of Biotech Act legislation, clearing the way for the Parliament to begin technical discussions on thousands of proposed amendments.

PAREA Executive Director Tadeusz Hawrot spoke to Morning Health Care about why this focus is needed. He pointed to mental health treatment and innovation as a clear case of regulatory and market failure in Europe, with a substantial amount of need still going unmet.

Our advocacy efforts are paying off. The European Parliament has included approximately 20 amendments proposed by PAREA in its preliminary position on the Biotech Act. We continue to engage with parliamentarians to ensure the focus on mental health remains in the EP's compromise position.

In parallel, we have approached all 27 EU health ministers, sharing our position. We are encouraged by the positive replies and meetings so far from the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, Austria, Luxembourg, and Lithuania.

In the second half of November, PAREA will be organising a meeting in the European Parliament to launch our new position paper addressing mental health innovation in the Biotech Act. More details are coming soon.

Read the full POLITICO Pro piece here.