The European Commission is set to improve the information it provides on animal experiments in the European Union (EU). This follows a commitment made in June 2019[1] to speed up and standardise the reports that come from the 27 EU member states.

The changes are set out in a new Implementing Decision published in April[2] and include:

• Publication every year – replacing only every three years – by the Commission of the number of animals used in experiments in all EU countries.
• From January 2021, EU countries will submit short summaries of projects using animals within six months of their authorisation for publication in a central database. Up to now, member states had to publish these summaries but had no specific deadlines.
• A mandatory format for these summaries with clearer instructions on how to describe what is being done to the animals in these experiments and more details about their suffering and what happens to them at the end of the experiment.
• From January 2021, EU countries will have to update these summaries with a report on the outcome of the projects within six months of their completion for addition to the central database. These reports must also state whether future projects could be designed to avoid this suffering.
• More clarity on how to report the number of animals used: for example, both the source and parentage of monkeys taken from breeding centres in Asia and Africa must now be provided. This will help us monitor progress in moving away from supplementing colonies with wild-caught monkeys. We will also be able to see how many animals are used for higher education purposes and how many for training animal researchers, vets and doctors - both uses can be replaced by the use of models and videos.

Many of these changes are a direct response to input we have provided since Directive 2010/63 on the use of animals in scientific procedures in the EU came into force almost ten years ago, including complaints made on the variability of information across different member state reports, the time taken between authorisation of an experiment and publication of summaries (sometimes up to two years)[3], and on the crucial question of the source of monkeys from outside the EU.