{
 "id": "cross-border-prescriptions",
 "names": {
  "name": "A prescription that crosses a border",
  "aliases": [
   "cross-border prescription",
   "the common name rule",
   "Directive 2012/52/EU"
  ],
  "said": "A brand name stops at the frontier. The common name does not."
 },
 "region": [
  "europe-west",
  "europe-central",
  "europe-south",
  "europe-north",
  "europe-east"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "kind": "treaty",
  "status": "in-force"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU, made under Directive 2011/24/EU, sets what a prescription must carry to be dispensable in another EU Member State. Article 2 states the scope: it applies to prescriptions \"issued further to a request of a patient who intends to use them in another Member State\". The patient has to ask for one; an ordinary domestic prescription does not become portable by itself.",
  "story": "The Annex is a list of four things, and the fourth is the one that does the work.\n\nPatient identification: surname or surnames, first names \"written out in full, i.e. no initials\", and date of birth. Authentication: the issue date. The prescriber: name, professional qualification, contact details including telephone or email with international dialling prefixes, work address with the Member State named, and a signature, written or digital.\n\nThen the product. The prescription gives the common name as defined in Directive 2001/83/EC, the pharmaceutical form, the quantity, the strength and the dosage regimen. A brand name is used only where the product is a biological medicinal product, or where the prescriber deems it medically necessary — and the prescriber then states why.\n\n*Inference —* the common-name rule is a translation device, and it is the same move accreditation makes in another part of this subject: replace a local identifier nobody abroad can read with a shared one they can. A pharmacist in Lisbon does not need to know a Finnish brand. They need an international non-proprietary name, a strength and a form.\n\nWhat the instrument does not do is make anything portable that was not portable already. It sets the form of a document. It does not oblige a pharmacy to stock the product, does not touch whether the medicine is authorised in the dispensing country, does not touch price or reimbursement, and expressly does not create a route for medicines that are controlled substances in either state.\n\nOutside the European Economic Area nothing equivalent exists. A prescription written in Bangkok is a piece of paper in Berlin, and the medicine a patient is discharged on may not be authorised, may be authorised at a different strength, or may be an entirely different molecule sold under a name that looks familiar.",
  "how": "What a patient discharged abroad would have to establish: whether the medicine has an international non-proprietary name written on the discharge summary rather than only a local brand; whether it is authorised at home; whether the quantity supplied covers the gap until a home prescriber can see them; and whether any of it is a controlled drug, which is a customs question as well as a clinical one.\n\nThe World Health Organization's fact sheet on substandard and falsified medical products, dated 3 December 2024, is the background to the other half of this: what is bought to fill the gap, and where.",
  "today": "As of 17 September 2026 the implementing directive stands as the EU rule. The parent directive's route closed to United Kingdom residents at the end of the transition period, and this project has not read what replaced it for prescriptions written in the EEA and presented in Britain."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "eu-directive-2011-24",
   "as": "The parent instrument this one implements.",
   "rel": "governed-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "the-discharge-summary",
   "as": "The document the common-name rule is really about.",
   "rel": "step"
  },
  {
   "to": "aftercare-at-home",
   "as": "The step where the prescription is presented.",
   "rel": "step"
  },
  {
   "to": "counterfeit-medicines",
   "as": "What fills the gap when the prescription will not travel.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "patient-data-transfer",
   "as": "The record that travels alongside it, under different law.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "follow-up-gap",
   "as": "The interval this instrument was written to shorten.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "eu-national-contact-points",
   "as": "Who a patient asks when a pharmacy refuses.",
   "rel": "org"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU, Article 2",
   "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2012/52/article/2"
  },
  {
   "label": "Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU, Annex",
   "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2012/52/annex"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52",
  "s:legislation-eu-directive-2011-24",
  "s:who-substandard-falsified",
  "s:nhs-eu-directive-route"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52",
    "note": "the Annex is quoted; the stretch marked *Inference —* is this project's reading"
   },
   "text.how": {
    "tier": "tradition",
    "note": "the questions a discharged patient faces; no instrument sets them out"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "medium",
 "needs_verification": true,
 "schema": 1,
 "type": "rule",
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "blurb": "Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU, made under Directive 2011/24/EU, sets what a prescription must carry to be dispensable in another EU Member State.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "europe-west",
   "name": "Western Europe",
   "note": "Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Switzerland, Austria"
  },
  {
   "key": "europe-central",
   "name": "Central Europe",
   "note": "Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia"
  },
  {
   "key": "europe-south",
   "name": "Southern Europe",
   "note": "Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta"
  },
  {
   "key": "europe-north",
   "name": "Northern Europe",
   "note": "the Nordics and the Baltics"
  },
  {
   "key": "europe-east",
   "name": "Eastern Europe",
   "note": "Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, North Macedonia"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "eu-directive-2011-24",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Directive 2011/24/EU on patients' rights in cross-border healthcare",
   "as": "The parent instrument this one implements.",
   "rel": "governed-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "the-discharge-summary",
   "type": "pathway",
   "name": "The discharge summary",
   "as": "The document the common-name rule is really about.",
   "rel": "step"
  },
  {
   "to": "aftercare-at-home",
   "type": "pathway",
   "name": "Aftercare at home",
   "as": "The step where the prescription is presented.",
   "rel": "step"
  },
  {
   "to": "counterfeit-medicines",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Substandard and falsified medicines",
   "as": "What fills the gap when the prescription will not travel.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "patient-data-transfer",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Moving a medical record across a border",
   "as": "The record that travels alongside it, under different law.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "follow-up-gap",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "The follow-up gap",
   "as": "The interval this instrument was written to shorten.",
   "rel": "risk"
  },
  {
   "to": "eu-national-contact-points",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "EU National Contact Points for cross-border healthcare",
   "as": "Who a patient asks when a pharmacy refuses.",
   "rel": "org"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52",
   "kind": "statute",
   "title": "Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU laying down measures to facilitate the recognition of medical prescriptions issued in another Member State",
   "publisher": "The National Archives, legislation.gov.uk",
   "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2012/52/article/2",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:legislation-eu-directive-2011-24",
   "kind": "statute",
   "title": "Directive 2011/24/EU on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare, Articles 7, 8 and 11 (text as held on legislation.gov.uk)",
   "publisher": "The National Archives, legislation.gov.uk",
   "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2011/24/article/7",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:who-substandard-falsified",
   "kind": "org",
   "title": "Substandard and falsified medical products — fact sheet dated 3 December 2024",
   "publisher": "World Health Organization",
   "url": "https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/substandard-and-falsified-medical-products",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:nhs-eu-directive-route",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "The EU Directive route",
   "publisher": "NHS",
   "url": "https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/healthcare-abroad/going-abroad-for-treatment/eu-directive-route/",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52",
   "note": "the Annex is quoted; the stretch marked *Inference —* is this project's reading"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "tradition",
   "note": "the questions a discharged patient faces; no instrument sets them out"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:eu-implementing-dir-2012-52"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "nuevo-progreso",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Nuevo Progreso",
   "as": "Half the street is pharmacies, and that is a different transaction from a course of treatment.",
   "rel": "governed-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "abortion-care",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Abortion",
   "as": "The by-post route, where the medicine crosses the border instead of the patient.",
   "rel": "rule"
  },
  {
   "from": "addiction-rehab",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Residential addiction treatment",
   "as": "What happens to the medication started abroad when the patient lands at home.",
   "rel": "governed-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-discharge-summary",
   "type": "pathway",
   "name": "The discharge summary",
   "as": "What the take-home drug list has to survive at a pharmacy in another country.",
   "rel": "governed-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "counterfeit-medicines",
   "type": "risk",
   "name": "Substandard and falsified medicines",
   "as": "The rule that decides whether a prescription written abroad can be filled at home.",
   "rel": "governed-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "eu-directive-2011-24",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Directive 2011/24/EU on patients' rights in cross-border healthcare",
   "as": "The implementing directive that makes a prescription written under this one readable at the next border.",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "patient-data-transfer",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Moving a medical record across a border",
   "as": "The other half of what a patient carries home.",
   "rel": "kin"
  }
 ]
}