The broth is bubbling at Sanofi.

A brown, cloudy soup full of microorganisms foams in the glass vat, which, according to laboratory worker Elena Antonov, is a fermenter and is used to develop new medicines.

Optimal production conditions prevailed in the broth, she says.

"Here, the microorganisms get everything they need."

Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Ricarda Lang, the federal chairwoman of the Greens, nods curiously.

In order to find out what not only yeast fungi and bacteria, but also pharmaceutical companies need for optimal production conditions, she finally came to Frankfurt's Industriepark Höchst on the occasion of her summer trip through Germany.

Together with her party friend, the Hessian Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir, she explains how Sanofi in Frankfurt wants to develop drugs against rheumatism and arthritis from nanobody molecules, and looks at machines in which production processes are tested in parallel in small glass containers.

When the employee Antonov tells us that the team in production can now do without harmful solvents and thus work 92 percent more efficiently,

"Fixing from year to year"

The company not only has a lot to show the two representatives of the federal and state government coalitions, but also a lot to criticize.

Because research and development have to be financed, the company is interfering with plans by the Berlin traffic light coalition to extend the de facto ban on price increases for medicines.

Sanofi head of research Jochen Maas speaks of “tinkering from year to year”.

The industry needs planning security.

His CEO Paul Hudson recently warned that the price moratorium would make Germany unattractive for investments.

"We have dramatic conflicting goals here," admits Economics Minister Al-Wazir - on the one hand, the costs for companies and wages have risen, on the other hand, social security contributions should remain stable or fall.

He himself would like research in Germany to remain "refinanceable", he emphasized in Frankfurt.

"This is extremely important for the Rhine-Main location." His federal chairwoman sees it differently: she is also in favor of structural reforms, and the state should also add more taxes for health insurance, especially for the long-term unemployed.

"But the pharmaceutical industry must also make its contribution."

Dispute over patent protection

There is also conflict when it comes to patent protection for medicines: Lang is one of those who would like to withdraw protection from medicines such as vaccines and give the patent freely to developing countries.

After all, the global south must also be protected against pandemics, she argues in Frankfurt.

"Ricarda Lang is fundamentally right," replies Sanofi research director Maas.

"But there's a better way to solve that than by releasing a patent." He fears that this will open a "Pandora's box" and that more and more medicines will have their patent protection withdrawn for political reasons.

But without patent protection, companies can't earn anything from it - and the research on it can't be refinanced, is his argument.

Other pharmaceutical companies had pointed out that it was not the patents that limited production, but rather the global lack of specialists who are familiar with the new mRNA vaccines and who can produce them.

On the other hand, the pharmaceutical company should be pleased that Lang has apparently become more sensitive to the topic of natural gas on her summer trip: She takes away that gas is not only an energy source for industry, but also an important raw material, for example for life-sustaining drugs and products.

"Therefore, it makes no sense to turn off natural gas in the short term."