Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-13-Speech-2-288"
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"en.20070313.22.2-288"2
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".
Madam President, the Commission is aware that the counterfeiting of medicinal products – to which the honourable Member referred – is a worldwide problem, and that it can have serious consequences for people’s health. We are therefore keeping a very close watch on this problem, and I do not wish to conceal from you my extremely serious concern about it.
The Commission has devised a general strategy against the counterfeiting of medicinal products in the European Union and has ensured – in view of the problem’s international ramifications – that it is used to work in harness with, and complement the work of, such international partners as the World Health Organisation and the Council of Europe.
The Community legal framework that permits the authorities to confiscate counterfeit medicinal products brought onto the Community market or found on it consists of Community legislation on medicinal products, on customs action, and on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. It is the Member States that are primarily responsible for the enforcement of the existing regulations.
Over the past five years, they have uncovered, on the EU market, 27 cases of counterfeit medicinal products in the legal supply chain and 170 on the black market, and, while that may not seem to constitute a vast amount, it is evident not least from the seizure, by Customs officials, of counterfeit medicinal products on our external borders that there has been a marked increase in them over recent years.
The statistics for 2005 show that Customs officials seized 560 000 counterfeit medicinal products at the EU’s external borders in that year, and an initial analysis of the Member States’ figures for 2006 has shown that the number of counterfeit medicinal products seized by Customs in that year can be expected to total over 1.5 million, which amounts to a dramatic increase.
In its communication to the Council, the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee on how Customs might respond to the most recent developments in the counterfeiting and piracy of goods and products, the Commission put forward an action plan containing a series of concrete measures whereby this increase can be combated.
A start has already been made on two of the most important of these measures, namely the creation of an electronic system for the speedy exchange of information between customs authorities on risks of new kinds of counterfeiting and the establishment of a system through which businesses can submit to the customs authorities, as rapidly as possible, information that they need on counterfeits in order to be able to take action against them. The Commission also, in March 2006, sought to raise public awareness of this problem by warning of the availability of counterfeit medicinal products on the Internet.
In this warning message, the Commission publicly announced that it would be running a project to analyse the situation and would, in collaboration with the Member States, the European Medicines Agency and international partners, be examining whether the protection of public health made intervention necessary. The project will consider such matters as, for example, the trade in counterfeit medicinal products over the Internet.
The Commission intends to build on this analysis, on which work has already begun, and will, on the basis of it, arrive at policy solutions to the question of how any loopholes in the law may be closed. If it turns out to be necessary, we will have to carry out a wholesale revision of European law on medicines. These attempts at resolving the situation will of course be based on impact assessments, but I would like to assure you that we will do everything in our power to prevent counterfeit medicinal products continuing to find their way onto our markets in the future and thus putting people’s health at risk."@en1
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