By Amara Osei

The European Medicines Agency has published "Veterinary medicines in 2025," its consolidated report on regulatory activity for veterinary medicinal products in the European Union.

The document extends a yearly series in which EMA records the marketing authorizations, variations, and pharmacovigilance actions taken across the calendar year for medicines used in companion animals, food-producing species, and at the animal–public-health interface.

What does the report cover for practising veterinarians?

For companion-animal practitioners, the publication offers a single reference for the year's regulatory decisions affecting prescribing: new marketing authorizations, expanded indications, and safety-driven label changes across vaccines, parasiticides, anti-infectives, and other pharmacological classes.

Food-animal veterinarians track the same report for changes affecting herd and flock medicine: which antimicrobials received new or revised indications, which vaccines were authorized for novel species or production stages, and which restrictions were tightened under the EU's antimicrobial stewardship framework.

Public-health officials follow the report for signals at the human–animal interface, particularly resistance trends flagged during post-marketing surveillance of veterinary antimicrobials.

Where does the report sit in the EU regulatory system?

EMA is the European Union agency responsible for the scientific evaluation and safety monitoring of human and veterinary medicines. Veterinary product applications are reviewed by the agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Veterinary Use (CVMP), which issues scientific opinions. The European Commission grants final marketing authorizations on the basis of CVMP opinions.

The 2025 edition falls within the implementation period of Regulation (EU) 2019/6, the framework that replaced Directive 2001/82/EC and took full effect on 28 January 2022. The regulation tightened controls on antimicrobial use in food-producing animals, restricted certain critically important classes for veterinary use, and required member states to publish annual sales-and-use data.

How does the EMA report compare with U.S. practice?

Practitioners accustomed to reading FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) summaries will recognise the structure: a year-in-review of approvals, safety actions, and antimicrobial policy developments. The U.S. and EU frameworks differ in antimicrobial restrictions and in how post-marketing data are aggregated, but both publish consolidated annual reports that practitioners can use to track regulatory change at the prescription pad.

Where to find the document

The full report is available on the EMA website. Practitioners seeking product-level detail — for example, the specific new vaccines or parasiticides authorized during 2025, or the adverse-event findings that triggered label changes — can consult the document for the complete procedural record.

Subsequent EMA publications will track the 2026 cycle, with the next round of member-state antimicrobial sales-and-use data expected under Regulation 2019/6 reporting requirements.