The European Court of Justice is to hear a case brought by the European Commission against Austria over its classification of vitamin-rich food supplements as medicinal products. This makes them subject to lengthy authorisation procedures, which the commission says unjustifiably blocks the free movement of goods.
In a statement, the commission criticised the Austrian authorities for applying "purely quantitative criteria to classify an enriched supplement as a medical product". This did not, the statement said, "allow either for the differences between various types of vitamins or the different risk levels of excessive consumption."