Parallel Imports and Pirating

PRLog (Press Release) - May 23, 2007 -
PLANT PROTECTION PRODUCTS PARALLEL IMPORTS AND PIRATING
In all committees and working groups competent authorities and industry consider that parallel import (PI) is the exclusive cause of frauds in plant protection products (PPP).

It is time to react to such a sophism.

First of all it is not PI which are the cause of frauds but indeed the national, and more particularly French, competent authorities’ remissness relating to the lack of implementation of an adapted regulation framing the legitimate and duly motivated repackaging of imported products sought many times by AUDACE over the past 7 years.

Secondly frauds are not the privilege of parallel import marketing authorisations (MA) such as it was again very recently highlighted in the United Kingdom by a case involving a major manufacturer whose European subsidiaries are all members of national trade associations set up by the industry under a community umbrella organisation based in Brussels ECPA.

In the same way as it would not be acceptable to consider that all the holders of MA obtained through the elaborate procedure contravene the law, nor is it acceptable to link systematically PI to a risk of fraud.
So, the national competent authorities ought to be equally committed to controlling all the products put in the market and all the marketers without distinction of MA.

It’s the same of the industry’s intense lobbying of the European parliament aiming at discrediting importers in the context of the revision of directive 91/414/CE and the numerous communications revealing alleged figures of counterfeit or illegally traded products.

10th May 2007

Press release by
Association of Users and Distributors of AgroChemicals in Europe
http://www.audace-ass.com

http://www.parallelimportseurope.com

Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/10018006/1