Which Country Has the Most Medicine Shortages in Europe?

France logged 3,887 medicine shortage reports in 2025. Germany's register held 546 open shortages at the start of 2026. Read side by side, France looks seven times worse. It is not, or at least these numbers cannot show it.

Each country counts something different. Europe's pharmacists' association surveys all of them every year, and even it does not publish a country league table. What it does publish, and what each national register measures, is below.

What each country counts

A "report", a "notification", a "presentation" and a "new shortage" are four different units. A single medicine can appear as several presentations, for different strengths and pack sizes. A French "risk of shortage" may never become an empty shelf.

Europe-wide: shortages almost everywhere, at similar scale

The Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU) represents community pharmacists. Its Medicine Shortages Report 2025, published in March 2026, surveyed one pharmacy organisation in each of 27 countries in the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) between January and February 2026.⁶

Pharmacists in 96% of those countries reported shortages. The only exception was a single member state reporting none.⁶

The report gives bands, not names. In 37% of countries, more than 600 medicines were short when the survey was answered, and in 11% more than 1,000 were.⁶ Another 15% could not give a figure at all, which the report attributes to gaps in national monitoring.⁶

Pharmacies reported spending about 12 hours a week managing shortages. Only 15% of the countries allow a pharmacist to switch a patient to a different medicine in the same therapeutic class.⁶

France: big numbers from a wide net

France's medicines agency, the Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament (ANSM), counted 3,887 reports in 2025, almost the same as 3,825 in 2024. The peak was 4,925 in 2023.¹

The breakdown explains the size. Of the 2025 reports, 3,488 were warnings of a possible shortage and 399 were shortages that had happened. Actual shortages have fallen every year since 2022, from 1,623 that year.¹

The scope is narrower than it sounds, too. The figures cover only "medicines of major therapeutic interest", a legal category for drugs where a gap could put patients at risk.¹ Le Quotidien du Pharmacien reported the same total of nearly 3,880 in July 2026.⁷

Germany: fewer, longer shortages

Germany counts manufacturer notifications to the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM). The Central Research Institute of Ambulatory Health Care (Zi) counted 1,514 notifications in 2025, which covered 1,041 distinct shortages.³

On 3 January 2026, the BfArM register listed 546 shortages as current, according to the pharmacy news service Apotheke Adhoc.² That figure is a snapshot of what was open on one day, not a yearly total.

The Zi analysis also measured duration. Antipsychotics led the 2025 notifications with 173, and their shortages lasted 230 days on average.³

Spain and the Netherlands: falling counts

Spain's medicines agency, the Agencia Española de Medicamentos y Productos Sanitarios (AEMPS), measures the share of authorised presentations with a problem. In the second half of 2025 that was 1,151, or 3.5% of the total.⁴ It also reported a 17% fall in problems with "major impact", meaning those with no therapeutic alternative.⁴

The Dutch health minister told parliament on 1 April 2026 that new shortages fell for a second year. They were more than 2,200 in 2023, just over 1,500 in 2024 and just over 1,100 in 2025.⁵

The same letter estimates that about 3.5 million people, nearly one in three medicine users, were still affected in 2025.⁵ The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association (KNMP) gives the same 3.5 million on its shortages page.⁸

Why there is no honest ranking

No source reviewed here ranks European countries on one definition. PGEU, the only body asking every country the same question, publishes its answers as bands without names.⁶

National totals also depend on who must report. France counts early warnings, while the Dutch count starts after 14 days without supply.¹⁵ A country that reports earlier and more widely will look worse, even if fewer patients go without.

The trends are more comparable than the levels. France, Spain and the Netherlands each report a fall in actual or major shortages since 2023.¹⁴⁵ PGEU, asking pharmacists rather than regulators, found the situation had stagnated at high levels in 70% of countries.⁶

What the headline numbers leave out

Duration. A count treats a three-day gap and a 230-day gap the same. Germany's data shows the long ones cluster in mental-health drugs.³

Substitutes. A shortage with an easy alternative costs a patient a pharmacy trip. Spain's "major impact" category and France's major-interest category try to isolate the harder cases.¹⁴

Who is missing from the data. PGEU's 15% of countries without a figure are not shortage-free. They are unmeasured.⁶

How to use these numbers

If your medicine is short, check your own country's register rather than a comparison table. Germany's BfArM database, Spain's AEMPS medicines database and the Dutch Farmanco site each list products by name.

If you are moving or travelling with a long-term prescription, ask your pharmacist whether your exact product is on that register. Carry enough to cover a gap, within the importing country's rules.