(AGENPARL) - Rome, May 13 - The attempt to liberalize the drug distribution system with the "Cresci Italia" decree is heading towards total failure.
After 15 months the results speak for themselves: no new pharmacies open, four regions (Campania, Basilicata, Molise and Trentino Alto Adige) which have yet to announce the competition and numerous commissions not yet established.
Furthermore, denounces the Movimento Nazionale Free Pharmacists, half of the pharmaceutical offices placed in competition have been established in absolutely uninhabited areas, far from inhabited centers and certainly destined never to be opened because they lack the minimum parameters for survival
At this moment - continues the MNLF - hundreds of appeals from owner pharmacists are clogging up the Regional Administrative Courts and if things go the right way, in 12/16 months no more than 1500/1800 pharmacies will be able to open equal to an increase in '8% of Italian pharmacies.
If we add to this bleak picture the fact that the possibility, introduced by the Monti Government, of offering discounts on prescription medicines that citizens pay out of their own pockets, is in fact practiced only by a few dozen pharmacies, we have the vision of together with an outright failure.
A very meager result that tastes like a bluff.
At this point, comments Vincenzo Devito President of the MNLF, all the problems of the sector present before the "Grow Italy" decree remain unresolved, starting with the discriminatory treatment between pharmacists, the impediment to the freedom to provide services and the most elementary rules on competition .
