The Commission's website on the online pharmacies logo[1] and on falsified medicines[2] had 573 294 unique views between 2016 and 2018. It aims to raise awareness of the common logo, enable citizens to identify legitimate pharmacies and provide information on the potential dangers of using online pharmacies.

The Member States' websites are the primary source of information, including verification of the logo. Almost all Member States have published the list of registers of online medicine retailers[3] and many publish information on the dangers of falsified medicines. The Commission does not have statistics on the use of Member States' websites. The Commission is in regular dialogue with Member States on their national information campaigns and on raising public awareness on this issue.

In order to further prevent the introduction of falsified medicines in the legal supply chain, the Commission also introduced legislation to develop a verification and traceability system based on a unique identifier and an anti-tampering device. The rules outlined in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161 will apply as of 9 February 2019 and will require pharmacies (including online pharmacies) and hospitals to use safety features to verify the authenticity of prescription medicines.

In 2018, a Commission report outlined Member States' transposition measures and assessed their effectiveness in relation to the Falsified Medicines Directive (2011/62/EU)[4]. The report provides an overview of the penalties that Member States have in place or have taken to fight falsified medicines. This will help Member States, who have an important role to play in the enforcement of the legislation to identify best practices to discourage the falsification of medicines.

• [1] https://ec.europa.eu/health/human-use/eu-logo_en
• [2] https://ec.europa.eu/health/human-use/falsified_medicines_en and https://ec.europa.eu/health/human-use/falsified_medicines/developments_en
• [3] http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=/pages/regulation/general/general_content_000630.jsp
• [4] https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/files/falsified_medicines/com2018_49_final_en.pdf