US pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has announced it will cut by half its planned €2.5 billion investment at a facility under construction in Alzey, Rhineland-Palatinate (a state in southwestern Germany), reducing the expected number of jobs created from 1,000 to around 500. The company cited Germany's proposed healthcare stabilisation law (BStabG), which would impose higher rebates and tighter reimbursement rules on drugmakers, as making investment planning too unpredictable. The move puts pressure on the federal government ahead of the Bundestag's first reading of the bill, and compounds an already difficult economic picture for Rhineland-Palatinate, which has recently seen factory cancellations by both battery maker ACC and BioNTech; Lilly says construction is well advanced and it still intends to open the site in 2027.