Early Warning System annual expert meeting

The EU Early Warning System works by collecting information on the appearance of new substances from the 28 Member States, Turkey and Norway and then monitoring them, thus allowing the EU to respond rapidly to emerging threats. The specific objectives of this annual meeting were to discuss the recent developments concerning NPS at national level, in particular those related to the market, legal changes, national EWS and risk assessment systems; to identify emerging concerns at national and European level with a focus on specific substances; to review and discuss developments towards strengthening the toxicovigilance system; and to discuss how we can strengthen public health alerts, including the scope of dissemination, risk communication etc.

The costs for the participation of a representative of Israel in this meeting was supported by the ENP1 project ‘Towards a gradual improvement of ENP partner countries’ capacity to monitor and to meet drug-related challenges’, funded by the European Commission.