European enlargement may lead to flood of parallel imports
The accession of 10 new countries to the European Union in 2004 could
lead to the United Kingdom being flooded with parallel import medicines
if adequate controls are not put in place, the Association of the British
Pharmaceutical Industry has warned.
Speaking at a briefing earlier this week, Dr John Patterson, president
of the ABPI, said that all the 10 candidate countries — Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia,
Malta and Cyprus — had small economies and unstable currencies and
many had histories of not respecting pharmaceutical patents in the past.
He added that there was a risk that so many of their medicines might be
diverted for parallel trade that they might not be able to supply their
own domestic markets.
When Spain and Portugal joined the EU in 1985, restrictions on the amount
of medicines which could be exported from those countries were put in
place. “There is a danger that in the last-minute run up to the signing
of European treaties, any restrictions might be traded away,” Dr
Patterson said.
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