In a change with existing policies, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced Thursday, 19 July its plans to make all committee agendas and minutes publicly available by the end of 2013. The move is the latest in a flurry of recent moves by the agency to increase transparency after years of criticism regarding its perceived opaqueness.

EMA coupled its announcement with a "first wave" of documents pertaining to the Paediatric Committee (PDCO). The documents for that committee appear to be in a standardizedformat, making comparisons between them simple.

The documents also contain all conflicts of interest declared by meeting participants, though it remains difficult to determine the extent of some conflicts as a result of potentially confusing topic codes such as EMEA-001033-PIP02-11 or EMEA-000222-PIP01-08-M06.

In a statement posted to EMA's website, Executive Director Guido Rasi, who replaced Thomas Lönngren in November 2011, said the move is "an important part of opening up our operations."

The agency said the release of all minutes will be phased in, with final completion expected by the end of 2013.

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EMA - European Medicines Agency announces plan to publish committee agendas and minutes