EAEPC demands switch on EC pharma package

The European Association of Euro-Pharmaceutical Companies, which represents parallel traders, has written to the European Commissioner for Health, Androulla Vassiliou and Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to demand that responsibility for the so-called "pharmaceutical package" be turned over to Mr Vassiliou and out of the hands of Gunter Verheugen, the Commissioner for Industry.

The EAEPC's president, Richard Freudenberg, claimed in the letter that Commissioner Verheugen was supporting "the pharmaceutical industry's commercial agenda under the guise of protecting and empowering Europe's patients."

The two main areas of change are for information to patients provided by drugmakers, where freer use of the Internet and print media was considered, and a ban on medicine repackaging within the European Union (Marketletters passim). The EAEPC said the latter proposal was "based on myths and an impact assessment characterized by a complete lack of evidence, and worse, deliberate manipulation of the facts." The group also claims that "there is no single case of a counterfeit medicine entering the legal European pharmaceutical supply via a parallel distributor."