The European Medicines Agency has received discharge of its 2010 budget from the European Parliament
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In approving the discharge, the Parliament acknowledged the comprehensive actions that the Agency has taken over the past few years in the areas identified by the Budgetary Control Committee and recognised the measures the Agency has introduced to improve transparency and the handling of conflicts of interests. These include:
- strengthened procedures for checking the potential conflicts of interests of the Agency’s experts and staff, including the publication of all declarations of interests of experts and management staff and a commitment to an annual review of the Agency’s policy on declarations of interests;
- the organisation of a public workshop on 22 November 2012 to discuss the publication of clinical-trial data;
- the commitment to publishing the minutes and agendas of all of the Agency’s scientific committee meetings by the end of 2013. This process began in July this year and already covers the Paediatric Committee (PDCO), Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) and Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products (COMP).
Yesterday’s vote closed the Agency’s 2010 accounts and is the last formal step in the discharge procedure.
“We are delighted that the European Parliament has recognised the activities we have put in place to improve transparency and how we deal with potential conflicts of interests,” said Guido Rasi, the Agency’s Executive Director. “We look forward to continuing to focus on these areas in the coming months and years.”
The European Parliament is the European Union’s (EU’s) budget discharge authority. Once annual accounts are audited and finalised, Parliament decides, on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers, whether or not to grant a discharge to the Commission and other EU bodies for their spending in each financial year.