EU Concern Over Drug Market Practices

The European Commission has launched the second stage of infringementprocedures against four member states due to drug market problems.

The Commission says that: Germany maintains discriminatory requirements for parallel importers; Belgium obstructs the marketing of certain drugs even when they have European Union authorization; Sweden charges a national fee to holders of a Community marketing approval for medicinal products despite payment of an EU fee; and the UK takes insufficient steps to prevent plant-based drugs being marketed as food supplements.

The German complaint concerns its drug legislation, which obliges parallel importers to indicate their names on blister packs as well as on the external packaging of products. The relevant EU directive on labeling requires only the name of the holder of marketing authorization to appear on primary packaging (blisters) and not that of the parallel importer.