How we work

To fulfill its mission, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) works closely with national competent authorities in a regulatory network. The Agency also implements policies and procedures to ensure it works independently, openly and transparently and upholds the highest standards in its scientific recommendations.

EMA brings together scientific experts from across Europe by working closely with the national regulatory authorities in European Union (EU) Member States, in a partnership known as the European medicines regulatory network.

The network pools resources and expertise in the EU and gives EMA access to thousands of European scientific experts who take part in the regulation of medicines.

Ensuring the independence of its scientific assessments is a high priority for EMA. The Agency takes care to ensure that its scientific experts, staff and Management Board do not have any financial or other interests that could affect their impartiality.

EMA strives towards being as open and transparent as possible about how it reaches its scientific conclusions. EMA's European public assessment reports describe the scientific basis for EMA's recommendations on all centrally authorised medicines.

EMA also publishes a large amount of information in lay language about its work and about medicines. For more information, see Transparency.

The Agency also seeks to publish clear and up-to-date information on how it operates, including planning and reporting documents and information on funding, financial management and budgetary reporting.

In this section

• Access to documents
• Anti-fraud strategy
• Big data
• European medicines regulatory network
• External whistleblowing policy
• Governance and reporting
• Handling competing interests
• Information management
• Public hearings
• Regulatory science strategy
• Services and databases
• Transparency