Deadly Prices

This group was selected for the 2025 Shortlist with Deadly Prices – How Big Pharma Feeds Inequality in Europe.

Deadly Prices – How Big Pharma Feeds Inequality in Europe

What is the price of a life? When it comes to medicines, that is a national secret across Europe, the investigation «Deadly Prices» has revealed.

Millions of Europeans lack access to medicines that save or prolong lives in other European countries, where these drugs are available. The IE team collected data from each country on specific, indispensable therapies for cancer and other severe illnesses. Of the 32 innovative medicines with a proven benefit, which have been licensed for the EU between 2019 and 2024, – at least 5 are missing for patients dependent on the pubic health system in 10 of the 27 EU member states. In the smaller and poorer countries the numbers are even higher.

This is possible because during the past 15 years, a blanket of secrecy has been laid over the vast European pharmaceutical market. Companies approach the national authorities in each country separately to offer new drugs with a discount, provided they never tell their colleagues in any other country what that rebate is and are ready to sign non-disclosure agreements including harsh penalties for a violation of the contract.

In order to find out how and why not all EU citizens are granted the same access to life saving drugs, the team conducted more than 60 interviews with national and European officials, negotiators, politicians, doctors and affected patients. The reporters achieved through data analysis to crack into the actual price in several countries of one life-saving drug against cystic fibrosis, showing that poorer nations foot higher bills than richer neighbours for the same therapy, making it unaffordable for the public health system in some countries.

The results prove that the reason for the unequal access to medicines is brutal and simple: The producers price their drugs out of reach for the patients in smaller and weaker countries. The pharmaceutical industry says they would like countries to pay according to their means, so that the rich would pay more than the not so rich. But the investigation found, that this is not true: The scrutiny of the breakthrough drugs of one pharmaceutical producer indicates that the company charges much more in some low-income countries than in other, well-to-do economies, only because the latter have more leverage in the negotiations.

The eight-months’ investigation, led and coordinated by the team Investigate Europe, revealed, how this system, that determines how sick people in Europe live or die, works and has been installed without any public scrutiny. The publications also revealed, that the drug producers fund with millions of Euros patient organisations in order to make them advertise for innovative drugs and put the governments under pressure to pay the high prices.

Additionally it was revealed, how Eli Lilly, the world’s biggest pharma company, lured the German government, which until then as the only one in Europe made negotiated drug prices public, to change the law, in order to grant in future the pharmaceutical industry secrecy for the prices of innovative drugs in exchange for an investment in a new production facility.

Main Team:

Ingeborg Eliassen – Coordinator and Journalist in Norway

Ingeborg Eliassen is an award-winning journalist and was a member of Investigate Europe from 2016 until 2024. Long career in daily newspapers with stints as correspondent in Washington and Brussels. Author of non-fiction books on labour, universal basic income and fighter jets.

Eurydice Bersi, Lead Researcher and Journalist in Greece

Eurydice Bersi, is a reporter with Athens-based investigative team Reporters United, the Greek partners of Investigate Europe. Before she spent more than two decades at the foreign desk of Kathimerini, a major Greek newspaper.

Christina Berndt – Journalist in Germany

Christina Berndt is a leading science editor with the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and a trained biochemist and immunologist. She has won numerous science and journalist awards and is the author of several bestselling popular science books.

Lorenzo Buzzoni – Journalist in Italy

Lorenzo Buzzoni is an Italian investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who focuses on cross-border investigations. He was shortlisted twice for the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize (2022, 2024)

Markus Grill – Journalist in Germany

Markus Grill is an investigative health reporter for the public broadcasters NDR and WDR in Germany. He was previously a reporter and editor at SPIEGEL and STERN and editor-in-chief of CORRECTIV. He is also the author of a book on the manipulations of the pharmaceutical industry.

Maria Maggiore – Journalist in Belgium/Brussels

Maria Maggiore is covering European current affairs since more than twenty years for various media including La Stampa, Radio Popolare and Euronews. She has found in cross-border journalism the true meaning of being a journalist today: reporting with a broader horizon than the national lens.

Leila Minano – Journalist in France

Leila Minano is a Paris-based award-winning journalist and author of several investigative books. She has worked for media outlets such as Vanity Fair, Mediapart, Libération, Marianne, Le Parisien Magazine and Le Figaro Magazine and is a member of Investigate Europe since 2016.

Maxence Peigné – Journalist in the United Kingdom

Maxence Peigné is is a French journalist based in London. He has worked for France Télévision, Radio France and the BBC World Service. In 2019, he received the”Reporter D’espoir” Solutions Journalism award for his coverage of homelessness in Finland.

Achim Pollmeier – Journalist in Germany

Achim Pollmeier is a senior editor with MONITOR, a long-established political TV program on ARD, Germanies largest public broadcasting network. He regularly works on international research teams and authored numerous investigative reports and documentaries.

Manuel Rico – Journalist in Spain

Manuel Rico is a Spanish journalist. He held management positions in several Spanish media organisations before joining Investigate Europe in 2023. He has received several awards for his research into the situation of care homes in Spain.

Piret Reiljan – Journalist in Estonia

Piret Reiljan is is an investigative reporter based in Tallinn. She’s part of a small investigative team at Estnian media house Delfi Meedia. Piret has won 3 local Bonnier awards for investigative journalism and has been nominated for European Press Prize with the investigation “Money to burn” in 2021.

Nico Schmidt – Journalist in Germany

Nico Schmidt is an investigative reporter based in Berlin with the team Investigate Europe. He is currently an AI Accountability Reporting Fellow at the Pulitzer Center, focusing on the impact of artificial intelligence on society.

Harald Schumann – Journalist in Germany

Harald Schumann is a Berlin-based award-winning journalist and author of several books and documentaries. He is the founder of the team Investigate Europe, whose aim is to investigate issues relevant for all Europeans and report beyond the narrow-minded national perspective.

Collaborating Team