On 24 May 2016, The EU Commission published additional Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) documents in an effort to stay transparent as the negotiations continue. The newly released documents contain a proposal on regulatory cooperation in pharmaceuticals, which was submitted to the US during the last round of the talks. Per the Commission’s news release:
“The round report shows that negotiators made good progress in all three pillars of the negotiations, namely:
- better access to markets for EU and US firms,
- simplifying technical regulations without lowering standards and
- global rules of trade, including sustainable development, labour and the environment and a dedicated chapter for smaller firms (SMEs).”
The proposed pharmaceutical cooperation would include:
- recognising good manufacturing practice inspections to avoid unnecessary duplication,
- exchange of confidential and trade secret information between regulators,
- supporting each other’s work on developing regulations in new areas which could lead to faster and cheaper approval of medicines.”
See here for additional information on the released documents.