EMA completes rules for conflicts of interests
New breach of trust procedure for Management Board members completes EMA’s framework
The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Management Board has adopted a new ‘breach of trust procedure’ to deal with cases of incorrect or incomplete declarations of interests of Board members.
This completes the Agency’s framework on dealing with potential conflicts of interests of its scientific experts, committee members, Management Board members and staff.
EMA takes care to ensure that its scientific experts, staff and Management Board do not have any financial or other interests in the pharmaceutical industry that could affect their impartiality. As part of these efforts, the rules on how the Agency deals with conflicts of interests have been strengthened over the last year.
Some Board members recognised the difficulties to balance the independence of scientific experts with the need to ensure that the best scientific experts in the European Union remain available for the evaluation and supervision of medicines. The Board will keep the implementation and the impact of the rules under regular review.