Public Policy

Engaging in public policy is a crucial dimension of our efforts to create an enabling environment to improve access to quality medicines and health care. In the U.S. and around the world, current health care systems face genuine challenges, and we strongly believe that there is long-term value to creating systems that are more efficient, stable and performance oriented.

As a highly regulated industry, we believe that public policy engagement, including lobbying, is an important and appropriate role for companies in open societies, if such engagement is conducted in a legal and transparent manner. We comply with all applicable lobbying registration and disclosure laws. To demonstrate our commitment to transparency, we also publicly disclose our Pfizer Political Action Committee and corporate political contributions and grants for health care education on our Web site.

Political Contributions and Lobbying

We believe that public policy engagement includes supporting policy positions that improve our ability to do business in a commercially and socially sustainable manner. We recognize that it is important that our engagement be conducted in a legal and transparent manner.

Our political contributions are guided first and foremost by federal and state campaign finance laws in the U.S. We also have a Corporate Procedure for Political Contributions by Pfizer Inc to make certain that the use of shareholder resources is in strict compliance with election laws and regulations around the world. The procedure restricts the use of such resources to support only federal and state candidates, political parties and political committees.

We recognize that compliance needs to be supported by information. Pfizer reports quarterly on lobbying expenses. In 2010 our total reported U.S. federal lobbying expenses were $13,330,000. We also publicly disclose, twice yearly, the corporate political and employee contributions made through the Pfizer Political Action Committee, a nonpartisan organization that provides opportunities for colleagues to participate more fully in the U.S. political process. A full report on our activities is available in the Lobbying and Political Contributions section of our Web site.

Pfizer has also voluntarily signed onto the European Commission's new register of interest representatives. Through the register, we declared 2010 expenses related to interest representation of 750–800,000 euros. This figure was broadly in line with the expenditures of other companies of similar size and scope.