Brussels, 19/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Commission decided to initiate action against France before the Court of Justice for failing to comply with the Community legislation on conditions for importing medicinal products. The French Public Health Code authorises customs officers to demand that anyone importing, distributing or simply transporting medicines to France should produce a certified copy of the full market approval (AMM) of such products immediately. The Commission considers this formality, the aim of which is to verify whether medicinal products have been authorised, is excessive. The existing Community pharmaceutical legislation stipulates that the packaging of medicines should carry the number of the authorisation for these products, to thus make it possible for the control authorities to verify, by checking this number, that the medicine has well and truly been authorised. The Commission received a complaint denouncing the particularly unwieldy nature of this administrative requirement. Documents relating to AMM are generally very voluminous and it is often materially very difficult to have the documents with the medicinal products in every place and at all times. The Commission considers that the abolition of this requirement should make it possible to eliminate a large obstacle to the trade in medicinal products, while safeguarding an effective level of public health protection. It greatly regrets that the draft decree believed to put an end to this obstacle, and which has been officially notified by the French authorities, was not adopted.