Roche has pulled the brake on new spending in Germany. “We have put all future investment decisions in Germany on hold for now,” Daniel Steiners, the drugmaker’s Germany chief, told the newspaper Welt. Politics, he said, had recently “destroyed a great deal of trust”. The timing is deliberate: the “Invest in Germany Summit” opened in Berlin on Monday, where Chancellor Friedrich Merz is courting capital.
For Bavaria, there is good news inside the bad. A Roche spokesperson told Reuters that decisions already taken are unaffected, including the expansion of the Penzberg site near Munich. A new diagnostics production centre costing more than €600 million is due to start in 2028, and about 7,900 people already work there. Roche has announced no job cuts or closures; it employs roughly 18,000 people across Germany.
What the row is really about
The trigger is the GKV Contribution Rate Stabilisation Act, passed by the Bundestag on 10 July and later by the Bundesrat. Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) puts the savings needed at almost €19 billion next year alone. Part of that is meant to come from pharma: according to the ministry, the statutory manufacturer rebate on patented medicines rises to 15.5 per cent, up from 7 per cent, with an extra 9 per cent on patented vaccines. The GKV umbrella body expects savings of €4.1 billion, of which €1.5 billion falls away through statutory exemptions.
The catch for industry is that the rebate follows sales in Germany, not where a drug is made. A firm with a large plant here pays the same as one that merely sells here. Roche is not alone: Eli Lilly halved its planned €2.3 billion investment in Alzey this summer, Boehringer Ingelheim scrapped planned spending of €900 million, according to Reuters, and Pfizer said it would review its plans.
A location clause – and who pays for it
The government is working on a way out. At the end of September an expert panel proposed a “location clause”: companies that research and manufacture in Germany could be fully or partly spared the extra rebate, by 2 to 8.5 percentage points. The GKV body puts the cost at about €1.3 billion, which would cut the law’s expected savings from €4.1 billion to €2.6 billion. Deputy chair Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis says: “Promoting business locations is not a task for statutory health insurance.” The Ersatzkassen want taxpayers to foot the bill; the AOK wants relief capped at 4.5 points. The government has not decided. Media reports say the Health Ministry called company decisions that harm Germany as a location “regrettable”.
Steiners considers the proposed clause inadequate; it would only partly cushion the law’s effects. Roche wants to know whether investment at the site is “still welcome or not”.
Our reading, with moderate confidence: the freeze is a bargaining position more than a retreat. Roche has invested some €3.5–3.8 billion in Germany since 2020 (sources give different figures), and Penzberg goes ahead. A compromise with a narrower clause than industry wants looks likely. For people on public insurance it is not neutral: the bigger the relief for drugmakers, the greater the pressure on the supplementary contributions Warken set out to stabilise. The effect on 2027 rates will only become clear once the clause is settled.
Earlier coverage: Warken defends savings law: Financial gap closed
Sources: Federal Ministry of Health, WirtschaftsWoche (Reuters), Blick, Apotheke Adhoc, ms-aktuell
