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:

  1. better access to markets for EU and US firms,
  2. simplifying technical regulations without lowering standards and
  3. 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:

  1. recognising good manufacturing practice inspections to avoid unnecessary duplication,
  2. exchange of confidential and trade secret information between regulators,
  3. 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.