News: Europe to allow DTC advertising

The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7158 p109-114
28 July 2001

Europe to allow DTC advertising

The European Commission has decided that it is appropriate to abandon the strict prohibition on direct to consumer advertising of prescription medicines. It has taken this decision because people want more information on medicines.

As a first step, and to allow evaluation of the effect of the change in policy, the change is to be implemented only for medicines used for the treatment of three long-term illnesses — diabetes, AIDS and asthma. The test period will be five years.

During the test period information about medicines in the three disease categories will only be made available to patients, or groups of patients, on request. No unsolicited material or direct advertising will be allowed. The commission expects the pharmaceutical industry to adopt principles of good conduct and procedures for self-regulation, which must be agreed with relevant national regulatory authorities.

The proposal is one component of a set of proposals for a comprehensive reform of EU medicines legislation. Other changes include proposals to cut the maximum time allowed for national authorities to consider applications for marketing authorisations from 210 days to 150 days. In addition, all applications for new active ingredients will have to be made through the European Medicines Evaluation Agency. Conditional authorisations, valid for only one year, are also to be introduced.

A commission memorandum on the changes can be found at pharmacos.eudra.org.

The European commissioner for enterprise, Erkki Liikanen said: “This decision will help patients all around Europe get new and better medicines quicker than is the case today. It will also help patients to get better information about the medicines that are available to them.”