Articles

The new Belgian federal government has outlined its vision for public health in a policy paper under the slogan “More money for health, more health for our money”. Public health is a high-priority sector with a significant budget, and the policy paper introduces several key measures that will shape the pharmaceutical industry in the coming years. For pharma companies operating in Belgium, these developments bring both new regulatory challenges and strategic opportunities. Here is a focused analysis of ten key changes and their potential impact on the pharma industry.

Misleading claims (so-called “denigration”) about competitors’ medicinal products or devices may be illegal, as several recent cases from the European Commission and national competition authorities illustrate. Even if the allegations are not incorrect in themselves, their totality and framing (“what is not said”) can still cross the line. Companies must be very careful with this type of “information campaigns”.

The Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) recently revised its public access to documents policy to align with the European Union (EU)’s evolving transparency standards. Effective since 15 January 2025, the new policy seeks to ensure broad access to all documents that the CPVO holds, while protecting private parties’ commercial interests. In particular, a system of prior confidentiality requests has been put in place for applicants of Community plant variety rights (CPVR).

On 6 January 2025, the European Commission published a draft proposal aimed at further harmonising labelling requirements for plant protection products (PPPs) in the European Union (EU). The proposal intends to repeal the existing labelling rules and introduce certain new requirements, including mandatory digital labelling. Since the draft proposal has not yet been formally adopted, some changes to the final version remain possible.

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s judgment of 29 February 2024 sheds light on the question of whether Member States may prohibit the activities of e-commerce platforms operating in the field of medicinal products not subject to medical prescription.

The case involved the www.doctipharma.fr website which was edited and operated by the French company Doctipharma SAS (“Doctipharma”). The website connected pharmacists with customers and allowed the latter to buy medicinal products not subject to compulsory medical prescription from pharmacies websites.