ABSTRACT
Among the member states (MS) of the European Union (EU), each country is free to implement its own national pricing and reimbursement policies as well as to endorse regional agreements, provided that these abide by the Transparency Directive.1 Therefore, there is a wide variety of pharmaceutical pricing regulations, especially given the historic, political, legal, and economic diversity across countries combined with the variety of health-care systems in terms of funding and organization. However, these regulations are not fully responsible for price differentials between the EU MS on both patent and off-patent markets.2-4 Despite the large number of cost containment measures ratified by the MS of the EU throughout the past couple of decades in order to curb the evergrowing pharmaceutical expenditure and its consequence on the budgets of public payers, the spending in the out-patient sector has grown by 76% on average from 2000 to 2009 (and went from approximately €260 to €340 in purchasing power standard per capita).3
