Recent events involving drone-related escalations in Latvia, along the EU’s eastern border with Russia, and elsewhere in the Baltic region, have highlighted the need to prevent medicine shortages.
They have also underscored the importance of strengthening local manufacturing by all means, as a key component of national defence.
Signe Jantone, Executive Director of the Latvian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, provides a deeper analysis of the situation. We publish her commentary below.
My family and I often travel to Latgale. Our ancestral home is there, near Rēzekne. Others might say it is in the middle of nowhere; I would say it lies at the very heart of Latvia. It is a place where people have, on several occasions, experienced first-hand what a threat to Latvia’s airspace means in practice, making one feel all the more acutely just how fragile the sense of everyday security truly is.
My family’s 72-hour emergency bag is kept at our home in Riga, and until now we had never taken it with us to our country house. So, when the emergency alert came through, I immediately found myself trying to work out whether — and where — we even had our passports, bags, chargers, food, sleeping bags and medicines. In Rēzekne, schools and nurseries were closed, as were pharmacies, while many people woke up uncertain as to whether they were expected to go to work at all. It is precisely in moments like these that it becomes clear that national resilience begins not only with the army or border protection, but also with the most ordinary essentials — whether people have access to medicines, food and information.
Although I am not, by nature, a panic-monger, the recent drone incident in Rēzekne was a wake-up call that we also need to keep emergency supplies at our country house — from a battery-powered radio to medicines, plasters and bandages.
In Rēzekne, pharmacies were closed due to drones, as over the past four years the responsible institutions have been working on a plan to shut down or prohibit as much as possible in the event of a threat. However, it is equally important for the state to ensure that critically necessary institutions and businesses, including private-sector pharmacies, continue to function.
The Rēzekne municipality has already announced that it will develop a model for 24-hour kindergartens where children of state and municipal employees who must work during a crisis can be left. But we now know that the same needs to be considered in Cēsis, Valmiera, and Balvi as well. And we also need to think about the children of private-sector employees, because we want fuel stations, pharmacies, and also some grocery stores to keep operating.
Local production as a key advantage
In times of crisis, the local pharmaceutical sector — encompassing medicine manufacturing, supply infrastructure and pharmacies — becomes one of the key components of national security. It is precisely here that Latvia holds an advantage which we ourselves speak about too rarely and too modestly.
Latvia is one of the few countries in the region capable of ensuring a full-cycle pharmaceutical supply chain, from scientific research and product development to advanced manufacturing, domestic market supply, and exports to dozens of global markets. We have both manufacturing companies and a historically developed knowledge and infrastructure base, scientific institutes, universities, experienced specialists, and decades-long traditions in chemistry and pharmaceuticals.
This is Latvia’s strategic capacity, not merely one of Latvia’s basic economic sectors. It is one of the most outstanding and life-saving industries, serving both as a foundation of resilience and as a driver of economic growth.
The Latvian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (LZR) prioritises uncovering and showcasing the potential of Latvia’s pharmaceutical industry, including our knowledge base, research, manufacturing capacity and export capability. Too often, we fail to properly value what we already have: a high value-added industry with strong export capacity and a highly significant role in national resilience.
Across Europe, there is currently an increasingly active debate on strategic autonomy in the pharmaceutical sector. The most proactive countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden, are already taking action with support from both national governments and the European Union (EU). The pandemic demonstrated just how vulnerable countries can become when they rely entirely on international supply chains and the manufacturing capacity of other nations.
The European Union is working on strategies and plans to restore pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity and capability across its Member States. Latvia already has this advantage, but so far there has been a lack of administrative will, coupled with practical action, to fully recognise and make use of the sector’s potential.
Our pharmaceutical sector can ensure not only export-oriented production, but also a critically important safety buffer in situations where global supply chains are disrupted. For this reason, the availability of medicines is no longer solely a healthcare issue. It is part of the state’s security architecture.
If we recognise this too late, there is a high risk that, in the event of global shocks, Latvian patients will face shortages of medicines. Latvia imports 95% of its medicines, which essentially means we are almost entirely dependent on global pharmaceutical markets.
In crisis situations, our vulnerability and the risk of medicine shortages remain high, particularly because no medicine reserves have been established in Latvia outside the major hospitals.
For this reason, the issue of local pharmaceutical production and its strengthening is a matter of pragmatic state policy, not protectionism or sentimental patriotism.
Export-oriented sector
At present, more than 90% of medicines produced in Latvia are exported, while the sector’s contribution to the economy reaches approximately 4% of GDP. Latvian pharmaceutical manufacturers are currently actively developing portfolios of generic medicines, namely medicines whose patents have expired and which compete with original medicinal products.
The entry of generic medicines into the market significantly alters price dynamics. Once patent protection expires, competition enables a substantial reduction in medicine prices. This means both more affordable treatment for patients and a significant reduction in the burden on healthcare budgets. This is also an important advantage that local manufacturers have set as their objective, which often goes unnoticed in everyday discourse.
This is precisely why the presence of local manufacturers in the country is important, as it ensures not only jobs and exports, but also, as I have mentioned, healthier competition and more predictable availability of medicines.
Latvia has every opportunity to become a pharmaceutical and health technology hub for the Baltic and even the Nordic region. We already have strong companies, scientific institutes, universities, and a growing sector of digital health and artificial intelligence companies. This ecosystem can become one of the cornerstones of Latvia’s future growth, including in times of disruption and recovery.
However, this requires a targeted policy, including a clear system of critical medicine reserves, smart public procurement, and a “green corridor” for local manufacturers within the reimbursable medicines system, support for research and the development of new products, investment in the modernisation of manufacturing, a competitive reimbursable medicines policy, a long-term vision of pharmaceuticals as a strategic sector, and political will.
In a world where security increasingly means the ability to provide for one’s own essential needs, pharmaceutical manufacturing is becoming a priority sector. It ensures the state’s ability to rely on itself, providing its population with medicines and health. Therefore, in my view, the question is not whether we can afford to invest in this sector. The question is whether we can afford not to, and how severe the consequences will be for our people if we do not.
Access to medicines should be treated in the same way as air defence systems and communications: they must be ensured here and now. And Latvian manufacturers and pharmaceutical industry entrepreneurs are capable of delivering this.
22.05.2026.
