Articles for the ‘’ Category

Over the Christmas break, the Belgian Parliament adopted an urgent law with several measures linked to the approved 2026 healthcare budget, with effect from 1 January 2026. The law is intentionally limited to provisions that must enter into force immediately to ensure that the required savings and revenues are available from the start of the budget year. Several measures are directly relevant for pharma companies. This blog post highlights the key takeaways and briefly examines the central budgetary provisions affecting the sector.

On 11 December 2025, following overnight negotiations, the Council and the European Parliament announced a political agreement on the long-awaited Pharma Package (see here). The reform seeks to update the EU’s pharmaceutical rulebook to facilitate access to safe and affordable treatments and bolster the life sciences sector’s competitiveness. While more detailed information is still trickling out, including the official text of the provisional agreement, we summarise below the main axes of the package available at this time.

The Belgian Constitutional Court (“CC”), on 6 November 2025, annulled some provisions of the Law of 18 May 2024 containing various provisions on health and finance, striking down the pharma industry ‘unavailability contribution’.

Food company Mowi Poland successfully challenged the European Commission’s new hygiene rules governing ‘stiffening’—a specialised fish processing technique—on the grounds that the Commission failed to obtain mandatory scientific consultation. While the Commission defended its approach by characterising the measures as mere “clarification” of existing law and citing industry guidelines as support, the EU General Court rejected this argument in its judgment of 24 September 2025 (T-354/24). Siding with the food business operator, the Court determined that the regulation imposed substantive new obligations requiring a scientific basis and consequently annulled the contested fish stiffening rules.

As the landscape of modern medicine evolves, combination therapies—those that use two or more distinct medicines, often from different companies—are becoming increasingly vital, especially in treating complex diseases like cancer. These therapies promise improved clinical outcomes through synergistic mechanisms of action. However, the reimbursement process for such therapies presents significant regulatory and legal challenges, particularly in the area of information sharing between pharmaceutical companies. Recognising this issue, the Belgian Competition Authority (the “BCA”) has issued on 10 September 2025 a communication clarifying how companies can cooperate without breaching competition law.