As from 1 July 2015, all online pharmacies or online shop selling medicines in the EU must display a new logo to show they are operating legally. The was introduced through the Falsified Medicines Directive to protect patients from fake medicines designed to look like real but might contain ingredients which are of bad quality or in the wrong dose, or they might contain no active ingredients at all.
Thus, from the 1st July and onwards, anybody buying medicines online can check if the website is legitimately registered and will be able to click on the logo which will take them through to a list of approved sellers.
If the registered person retails a medicine through a third-party market place website, then the third-party market place service provider must display that registered person’s EU Common Logo on every page of their website that offers the registered person’s medicine for sale to the public from that service provider’s site.
The sale of medicines online is legal in some EU countries, and not in others. This will still remain the case. For more information on the online sale of medicines, please visit the European Medicines Agency website.