On Thursday 29 February, the Court of Justice of the European Union handed down its judgment in a dispute between Doctipharma SAS and the Union des Groupements de pharmaciens d’officine (or UDGPO) concerning the legality of the online sale of non-prescription medicines via a website designed and managed by Doctipharma (the doctipharma.fr platform) (case C-606/21).
The UDGPO took the view that the online service provided by Doctipharma involved the latter in e-commerce in medicines, even though it was not a pharmacy.
By decision of 17 September 2021, the Court of Appeal of Paris (France) submitted a request for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Directive 98/34/EC laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations and of rules on information society services, as amended by Directive 98/48/EC, and Article 85c of Directive 2001/83/EC on the Community code relating to medicines for human use, as amended by Directive 2011/62/EU. This last article relates to the distance selling of medicines to the public.
The Court concluded, firstly, that a service provided on an online site linking pharmacists and customers for the sale of medicines not subject to compulsory medical prescription from the sites of pharmacies that had subscribed to the service did indeed fall within the concept of an ‘information society service’.
On the other hand, as regards the possibility for Member States to prohibit such a service, the Court concluded that they had the possibility to prohibit the provision of such a service if the provider of that service carries out the sale of those medicines without being authorised to do so by the rules of the Member State in which the provider is established.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/b36 (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)