‘Factories will close’ without wastewater directive revision, says Greek health minister

The Greek government is requesting that the EU Council of Environment Ministers revise the Wastewater Management Directive (WWMD), warning that its implementation could create “non-viable conditions” for the pharmaceutical industry.

Speaking to Euractiv on the sidelines of a conference on vaccines, Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis said that if the directive is enforced as planned, “factories will close.”

During his address at a conference organised by the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association on vaccination, Georgiadis criticised the directive’s approach, adopted by the EU Environment Council in 2022.

He explained that while wastewater from pharmaceutical production already undergoes three stages of treatment, the directive introduces a mandatory fourth purification level for remaining substances, with 80% of the cost to be borne by the pharmaceutical industry.

“A noble goal? Yes. Feasible? No,” he said. “Pharmaceutical companies are already considering moving production to India, the US, Russia or China because the numbers simply don’t add up,” he claimed.

Georgiadis raised the issue informally at the EPSCO Health Council in Copenhagen. According to the Greek minister, six countries expressed support. Greece also sent a formal request to the Council of Environment Ministers to review the directive before its 2027 entry into force, the minister explained to Euractiv.

“A few years ago, if I had said the same thing, I would have gotten ‘a beating’” he joked. “Now they’ve realised they were probably wrong. Europe is turning – it’s not as immovable as people think.”

EU’s naiveté and Trump’s EU push

The minister also criticised what he described as a long period of European “naiveté”, during which the EU sought to lead the world on environmental policies at the expense of its own competitiveness.

“Europe thought it could impose its green standards globally,” Georgiadis said. “Instead, we ended up importing cheaper products from China, Turkey and India, produced with no such restrictions. It’s as if the European elites wanted to commit [economic] suicide.”

Georgiadis went on to argue that former US President Donald Trump’s election had indirectly benefited Europe.

“Although he can be somewhat abrasive, Trump’s approach helped Europe by forcing it to wake up,” he said, citing the Wastewater Directive as a key example.

Industry voices echo concern

Theodoros Tryfon, president of the Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (PEF) and a member of Medicines for Europe, stated that the European pharmaceutical industry faces 20% higher costs than its competitors in the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Asia.

“We experienced the theatre of the absurd with the Green Deal,” Tryfon said. “Drugs have left Europe to be manufactured in India, only to return here through Turkey—polluting even more along the way.”

He added that the WWMD was based on inaccurate data promoted by Green MEPs from Denmark, and that Greece is now conducting a national study to establish the real sources and levels of pharmaceutical effluents.

Both PEF and the Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (SFEE) have warned that the directive, if left unchanged, could trigger medicine shortages across Europe by imposing heavy financial burdens on manufacturers.

“The adoption of the wastewater directive threatens to ignite a wave of shortages across all categories of medicines in Europe,” the SFEE cautioned, noting that implementation costs would hit both generic and innovative producers.

[BM]

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