Introduction
This chapter begins with the early regulation of medicines, which was concerned with quality rather than any scientific assessment of efficacy and safety. It describes the latter half of the nineteenth century wherein the need for objective scientific assessment of the safety and efficacy of new medicines and the concept of risk–benefit of medicines was born. It also talks about the configuration of the Licensing Authority in the UK and the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) as a key provision of both the Medicines Act 1968 and the European medicines legislation. The chapter analyses Directive 2001/83/EC, which governs all the requirements for the contents of the application dossier and grant of marketing authorisation of medicinal products. It recounts the development of statutory controls in the UK that was consistent with the evolution of the overarching European medicines legislation and the formation of the central European regulatory agency.