Europe has been facing shortages of medicines, both specialised and common, for several months. On Wednesday 26 April, the European Commission presented a reform of its pharmaceutical legislation.
The European Commission wants to make medicines "available, accessible and affordable" It wants to extend the intellectual property of new medicines by a year or two, provided that they are sold everywhere at the same time in the European Union. While patients in the West and large Member States have access to 90% of recent medicines, in the East of the EU this figure may fall to 10%.