This book strikingly demonstrates the reach and impact of European law in the sector of public health, and in particular medicine, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical professions.

Professionals and specialists in many different aspects of pharmaceutical medicine – on the technical side, on the clinical side, on the commercial front – are now confronted daily with the requirements of European law to an extent which, only a few years ago, was almost unimaginable.

Lawyers, for their part, have seen new fields of practice emerge, as it has proved necessary to apply the principles of European law to an increasingly Europeanised market in medical products and medical services. From a starting point forty years ago in the embryonic provisions of the EEC Treaty, a very substantial body of Community legislation and case law of the European Court of Justice has emerged in recent years. Community-wide rules on free movement, competition, patents and trade marks overlie national markets and prevail over national law. Europe-wide bodies have developed – in competition policy, in trade marks and patents, and in the testing and evaluation of medicines, to name only a few.

Within this rapidly growing field, the essays published in this book tackle a wide variety of topics: the impact of European rules in all the above areas on pharmaceuticals; the free movement of health care professionals; European drug regulation; biotechnology and the moral limits on the legal protection of inventions; product liability; and transnational health care litigation.