Estonia, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Medicine, Strike

In mid-January 2015, the Riigikogu is to hold the second reading of the amendments to the Pharmaceuticals Law, which small pharmacies say gives big pharmacy chains free hands to take over the entire market, which means an end to independent pharmacies, which are not part of any chain and are usually owned by the pharmacist.

However, this bill does nothing to help improve the service availability in rural areas where most of the independent pharmacies are located. Estonian Chamber of Pharmacists CEO Karin Alamaa-Aas said that they chose the path of warning strike also because at the end of the year, the Supreme Court declared the founding restrictions of pharmacies to be unconstitutional.

Aas said that this is a death sentence for pharmacist-owned pharmacies. She said that pharmacies should be owned only by pharmacists, and large chain pharmacies should during a transitional period sell their pharmacies to them.