The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7422 p438
14 October 2006

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EMEA budget cuts threaten the protection of public health

Threatened budget cuts will put the public health functions of the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) at risk next year, it says (PDF 40K).

The agency has asked for €46.32m to support its increasing involvement in public health measures that are not supported from the fees pharmaceutical companies pay for their medicines licensing applications.

But the indications from EU budget discussions are that only a small increase over this year’s payment of €34m will come from EU central funds. As a consequence it it likely that it will be difficult for the agency to meet its obligations to implement new rules on licensing children’s medicines, run its database on medicines used throughout Europe (EudraPharm) and operate the EudraVigilance central data processing network for adverse drug reactions.

The agency is also facing problems because of the volume of licensing applications this year. At the start of the year, the EMEA expected to receive 61 applications, but it now expects to deal with 91.