At the end of 2020, the European Commission set out its vision to build a European Health Union with its announcement of the new pharmaceutical strategy for Europe (the new Strategy). As we discussed in a previous blog, the new Strategy seeks to introduce new policies and ideas, whilst bringing into the spotlight long standing challenges which were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The new Strategy puts forward numerous proposals for legislative reforms that are likely to affect the regulation of the entire life cycle of a medicinal product and the regulation of medical devices. As a reminder, the key elements of the new Strategy relate to innovation, availability, accessibility, affordability, and supply of medicinal products.

In this post, we focus on the developments in the first half of 2021, including a pilot project launched by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on market access and the Commission’s Roadmap on revisions to the pharmaceutical legislation.Continue Reading Update on the European Commission’s proposed new pharmaceutical strategy

The Falsified Medicines Directive 2011/62/EU (FMD) introduced a new requirement for safety features to appear on the packaging of all prescription-only medicinal products: a unique product identifier and an anti-tampering device (ATD). Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161 sets out technical detail around the characteristics of the safety features, how authenticity should be verified and by whom.

With the deadline to demonstrate compliance with the Delegated Regulation fast approaching (9 February 2019), we draw your attention to recent revisions to the “Question and Answers” guidance document (Version 13) published by the European Commission in January 2019, which contains amendments to some previous questions and a number of new Q&As. In particular:Continue Reading Revised guidance on implementation of the EU Falsified Medicines Directive