The 4-million euro EU investment into the establishment of a National Medicines Agency (ALIMS) in line with current EU practices scores highly on the list of such efforts in Serbia, as the Agency announced that 2013 has been the best business year since it was established nine years ago.

Since early 2002 when EU funded drafting of the legal framework for Serbia’s pharmaceutical sector, through the upgrade of Agency’s quality control laboratory capacities the investment until mid-2008 included the construction of a building for the Agency, its sophisticated equipment to test medicines, along with servers and other IT equipment.

Finally, the EU provided the support of the French National Medicines Agency by means of a twinning project where French experts provided on-the-job training and worked together with the staff of this Agency to develop procedures, standards and other regulations for everyday work of the now well-known ‘ALIMS’.

The Agency announced Tuesday that EU support has been “in particularly important” for its work.

“This support enables us to do our job even more successfully, to learn and exchange experience, but also to teach and improve Agency’s and Serbia’s rating in the world,” it said in a statement.