ABSTRACT
Registration of Chinese patent medicine in European Union (EU) is of great significance to the internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine as EU market acts as an important position in the global botanical market. In retrospect, the domestic studies on EU regulations of traditional herbal medicinal products have been conducted for more than 10 years, but there is still some cognitive bias and lack of research. In this paper, a review of the relevant research progress and the main misunderstanding problems about Directive 2004/24/EC, like the centralized and decentralized supervision system of traditional herbal medicinal products in the EU, marketing authorization procedures for traditional herbal medicinal products, Community Herbal Monograph and List Entries, would be systematically analyzed, so as to provide reference for the registration of Chinese patent medicine in EU.
ABSTRACT
The Community Herbal Monograph (CHM) is an official document which reflects the scientific opinion of European Medicines Agency (EMA) and plays an important role in technical harmonization of the herbal medicinal products. The role of CHM is very similar with the centralized procedure in the EU level as it represents the technical coordination results of the assessment about safety and efficacy of herbal medicine. The monograph and national procedure, decentralized procedure, and mutual recognition procedure together constitute the coexistence characteristic of centralization and decentralization of the EU medical legislation. The CHM and the traditional herbal medicine registration also constitute the core content of Directive 2004/24/EC in the EU and member state level respectively. And the CHM plays an important role in the registration of traditional herbal medicinal products in the EU member state. However, it has not yet been fully studied by domestic experts and scholars. This paper makes intensive studies on the value of CHM and analyzes the application of monograph in traditional herbal medicine registration. The purpose is to clarify the value and importance of CHM in the registration of traditional Chinese medicine in EU and to provide reference for the Chinese enterprises which are aspiring to open up the EU market.