Abstract
The EU integration has been partly motivated by its own weakness in the world economy, while the rest of the world worries about the protectionism tendency in the EU. Because of this the previous research tends to study the comparative disadvantage sector more than the comparative advantage sector. On the other hand, this paper analyses the integration in the pharmaceutical industry, which is one of the comparative advantage sectors of the EU with the large and expanding trade surplus, so that we could fill the gap of the present research.
This paper makes clear three interesting points. First is the asymmetrical feature of the EU integration. The EU integrates the new drug marketing authorisation procedure through the mutual recognition and the centralised system. However, the regulatory and natural obstacles against the pharmaceutical market unity still remain.
Second point is the strategic nature of the EU integration. With its own success of the pharmaceutical market integration, the EU actively takes the initiative for the development of the international conference of the harmonisation (ICH), which harmonise the marketing authorisation procedure among the EU, the USA and Japan. The ICH makes the EU enter Japanese market more easily than otherwise.
The third point is the lighting-up effect of the others' weakness and problem by the EU integration. The ICH accelerates of Japanese pharmaceutical companies to conduct the clinical tests in the EU and the USA, but this illustrates the “howling-out” of the clinical tests in Japan.
Thus, the analysis of this paper gives us the unique and interesting basis for the study on the regional economic integration.
