# \[e-drug\] Petition EU Directive/la revue Prescrire **URL:** \ **Category:** e-drug\ **Created:** [June 25, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-drug-petition-eu-directive-la-revue-prescrire/14588 "2002-06-25T14:06:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![christophe.kopp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2acd7d/32.png) [@christophe.kopp](https://talk.edrugplus.org/u/christophe.kopp)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-drug-petition-eu-directive-la-revue-prescrire/14588/1 "2002-06-25T14:06:40Z")
E-drug: Petition EU Directive/la revue Prescrire ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Colleague A proposed Directive and Regulation on medicines will be submitted shortly for adoption by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. A thorough review of these proposals can be found in European Medicines Policy/Prescrire International, available on request. If the proposals are adopted as they stand, they will lead to a number of extremely worrying changes throughout the Europe Community: - evaluation of marketing applications would be accelerated (not only for patients urgently needing new treatments), and authorisation would be granted once and for all, abandoning the current system of regular re-appraisals; - EMEA would maintain excessive secrecy in pharmacovigilance, hindering rational management of drug-related problems; - introduction of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs on the one hand, and lack of freedom of information on key scientific data on the other, would increase irrational use of drugs. Common sense dictates that the European medicines agency should be linked to the EU Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General of the European Commission, rather than the Enterprise Directorate as at present. Also, being funded mainly by fees paid directly by drug companies, the agency has a serious competing interest. Faced with a deliberate policy to serve industry first, health professionals and patients must act before it is too late. La revue Prescrire has launched a petition campaign calling Members of European Parliament and the President of the EU Parliament to oppose the Commission's proposed revision. The petition kit is available on request or on Health Action International website (www.haiweb.org). Please photocopy it and distribute it as widely as possible. Should you want to get European Medicines Policy/Prescrire International and our petition kit as PDF documents, feel free to ask me. Christophe Kopp Staff editor La revue Prescrire Member of Medicines in Europe Forum christophe.kopp@wanadoo.fr -- To send a message to E-Drug, write to: e-drug@usa.healthnet.org To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@usa.healthnet.org in the body of the message type: subscribe e-drug OR unsubscribe e-drug To contact a person, send a message to: e-drug-help@usa.healthnet.org Information and archives: [http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html](http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html)