At the third annual meeting of the Strategic Council for the Health Industry (CSIS), members of the government and leaders in the French health industry discussed methods to boost R&D spending and create more jobs. One goal of the CSIS is to increase the amount spent on R&D in the health industry by 10% over three years. One source for this increase in R&D spending is the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI), a project that facilitates the R&D of new medicines in Europe. Funded by the seventh Research Framework Program, IMI has a budget of up to €1 billion ($1.3 billion) over seven years; to create jobs, a credit of up to €50 million ($65.6 million) for the tax on total sales was recently approved for laboratories employing European researchers.

Source: Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry