Common Eurasian Market is Gaining More Ground

The Eurasian Economic Union has been recently expanded and now includes 5 countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Belorussia, Armenia, Kyrghyzstan. The movement of goods is already unrestricted within the Eurasian Economic Union (with some delay until 2017 applied in respect of Armenia and Kyrghyzstan in respect of exhaustion of IP rights). Now the Eurasian Economic Union made one step forward: it concluded an Agreement on Unified Principles and Rules of Circulation of Medicinal Drugs and an Agreement on Unified Principles and Rules of Circulation of Medical Devices. The said agreements provide for creating unified rules of inspection, pre-clinical and clinical tests, registration and examination, production and selling medicines and also general requirements with regard to safety and quality of medical products.

The importance of these agreements cannot be underestimated given that combined population of those countries within the Eurasian Economic Union is more than 180 million.

These agreements will also be important for pharmaceutical companies in terms of defining of their strategies concerning production, registration and distribution of drugs and medical equipment in the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union.