The European Commission has warned that despite plans to permit direct communication with consumers by pharmaceutical companies, direct to consumer advertising of the sort allowed in the United States will not be introduced in Europe.
Erkki Liikanen, EU Enterprise Commissioner, told a Brussels briefing that a code of conduct on communications with patients will allow companies to produce drug information , but it will be vetted by the European Medicines Evaluation Agency before distribution.
Companies will be allowed to provide information via web sites or through printed materials, but they will not be able to advertise their products in print or on television. The move is intended to regularise the information available to consumers with access to the internet and those without, according to the European Commission, because those with internet access can already view product-specific web sites which are legal in the United States.
The draft proposals do not specify whether companies will be allowed to advertise web sites in other media.
The draft legislation on reform of the European Medicines Evaluation Agency also proposes that the Committee for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (the scientific committee responsible for evaluating new drugs) will be able to set the terms for compassionate drug access prior to licensing throughout the European Union. At the moment these terms can vary from country to country, and are established by negotiation with national drug licensing agencies. However, compassionate access schemes will still have to operate within the legal framework established for compassionate access within each member state, and companies will still be permitted to charge for compassionate access if that is already permissible in individual member countries. These proposals are likely to fall short of the changes demanded by the European AIDS Treatment Group, which has previously lobbied for a regularisation of compassionate access provisions throughout the European Union, in order to avoid inequities in treatment access.