The EMA Turns 20: What Does It Want to Be?

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is 20 years old this year - and it confronts many of the problems familiar to anyone at that age. After the vigorous growth and boundless optimism of its early adolescence, the agency now must make up its mind about what it wants to be.

This is not just a matter of defining its personality. It also means taking on greater responsibility obtaining the resources it will need, and asserting its mission successfully in the face of the often harsh realities of the outside world.

The agency’s own sharpened awareness of the complex conditions beyond Canary Wharf, London, offices is its programme for 2014, which identifies half a dozen new priorities. As EMA’s executive director, Guido Rasi, publicly observed at the end of last year, “The environment in which we are operating is ever-changing, continuously presenting us with new challenges.”

For Reflector’s incisive look at the EMA’s growing pains as it faces the key policy challenges of 2014, see February’s issue of Pharmaceutical Executive, or click here.