UK to lose access to European Medicines Agency post-Brexit
The UK is at risk of losing alignment with the EU’s European Medicines Agency after Brexit, meaning it could lose the ability to evaluate, regulate and monitor new drugs as well as potentially being stripped of access to new revolutionary treatments for British patients.
The alignment of clinical trials across the European Union is vital to ensure patients receive potentially life-saving treatments. It’s particularly necessary to have EU members states cooperate when studying rare diseases given difficulties experienced when trying to find enough participants for studies.
The UK will likely lose this alignment after it withdraws from the EU in 2019, leading the British Heart Foundation, along with seven other science and research organizations, to sign a petition to continue the relationship regarding clinical trials as is in an attempt to help save the lives of UK and EU citizens alike.
If this relationship is not maintained, the UK would miss opportunities to move regulations and access new medication and the EMA’s base, currently, in London, will be relocated to Amsterdam and resume its operations on 30 March 2019.
Prime Minister Theresa May said in March: "We would, of course, accept that this would mean abiding by the rules of those agencies and making an appropriate financial contribution."
She continued: "Associate membership of these agencies is the only way to meet our objective of ensuring that these products only need to undergo one series of approvals, in one country.
"Second, these agencies have a critical role in setting and enforcing revenant rules. And if we were able to negotiate associate membership we would be able to ensure that we could continue to provide our technical expertise.
"Third, associate membership could permit UK firms to resolve certain challenges related to the agencies through UK courts rather than the European Courts of Justice," she concluded
The EMA is preparing for the UK’s exit and is redistributing the UK portfolio of over 370 centrally authorised products to rapporteurs and co-rapporteurs from the other member states. The UK is the largest contributor to the EMA’s operations with accounting for 30% of its assessment, monitoring and licensing work.