Editorial

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Welcome to the May 2013 edition of i2P - Information to pharmacists.
Economic turbulence seems to now be arriving in Australia with forecasts of high inflation rates, which also means high interest rates following on.
This type of economic forecast also means that banks will be more fractious with their borrowers. They are already offside with pharmacy due to the high level of bankruptcies over the past two years.
There is a pent up demand for a general wage increase for pharmacists impacting at a point in this month where pharmacy gross profit generally, is in decline.

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Court Rules on Pharmacy Ownership

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	Staff Writer articles by this author...
Editing and Researching news and stories about global and local Pharmacy Issues

In a landmark case, the European Court of Justice has upheld laws limiting ownership of pharmacies to pharmacists.
This is a significant blow to the proponents of deregulation and ownership of pharmacies by large retail chains, and the ruling will bolster arguments for retaining similar restrictions in Australia, where deregulation is to be reviewed in 2010.
The explanation of the court's decision, handed down in May 2009, is compellingly simple:

“Unlike pharmacists, non-pharmacists by definition lack training, experience and responsibility” and “do not provide the same safeguards as pharmacists."

This decision provides clarity and allows for better planning by European pharmacists.
The story was reported on the Bloomberg.com site.

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"Europe’s largest drug wholesaler (Celesio), lost a bid to have a European court overturn rules in Germany and Italy that prevent it from owning pharmacies.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said today it’s up to each of the EU’s 27 nations to “determine the level of protection of public health.” The EU’s highest court ruled Italian and German laws that allow only licensed pharmacists to own pharmacies are justified because they ensure drug distribution is reliable and of good quality. Celesio fell 15 percent in Frankfurt trading.

“This is bad for Celesio, but it’s not a catastrophe, they still have other good growth opportunities,” Karl-Heinz Scheunemann, an analyst at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, Germany, said in an interview today. “We had hoped the decision could be a bit different.”

"The court’s ruling today could have opened Germany’s 37 billion-euro ($50 billion) pharmacy business to Celesio. At stake were similar bans in at least 10 other EU countries, including Austria, France and Spain."

“Unlike pharmacists, non-pharmacists by definition lack training, experience and responsibility” and “do not provide the same safeguards as pharmacists,” the court said today.Building up pharmacy chains in Germany and Italy “is far out of reach now,” Thomas Maul, an analyst at DZ Bank AG in Frankfurt, said in a note to clients today. “Pharmacy deregulation in Germany was an essential part of Celesio’s ‘equity story’ over the last years. The ‘equity story’ has vanished now.”

Celesio became involved in the EU case after it bought mail-order company DocMorris in 2007. DocMorris, in a 2006 suit by a German pharmacy trade group, was accused of violating a rule that restricts ownership of retail operations to licensed druggists when it opened a shop in the state of Saarland.

Celesio and DocMorris will now focus on expanding the brand partner and mail-order businesses, Oesterle said."

For the full story visit http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601092&sid=aQzjC7i6b89k&refer=italy

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