** Late News Europe **EU Says No To Emergency Moves On Spanish PIs

At its December 13 meeting, the European Commission rejected requests from 10 European Union member states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) which applied for emergency measures to forestall the economic damage that would result from parallel imports of pharmaceutical products from Spain into the rest of the EU after December 31. Until that date, a transition provision in Article 47 of the Treaty of Accession of Spain prohibits the parallel import from Spain of pharmaceutical products still under patent in the importing country.

According to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations, the Commission gave no justification for its decision, which EFPIA director general Brian Ager says is "clearly of concern to our members associations and to the national industries they represent."

The Commission, Mr Ager points out, "for reasons that are not yet clear, seems to have ignored the intellectual property issues at the core of this case (Marketletters passim), along with the wishes of member states, rather than considering the very real impact that this situation will have on the European economy."