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In Germany and throughout Europe, medicinal products for adults have been developed and evaluated systematically for decades. Medicinal products for children and adolescents, however, have only been researched for the past ten years. As a result, many medicinal products have been administered to children without systematic clinical trials, for example regarding dosage or pharmaceutical form.EU Regulation 1901/2006 aimes to close the gaps in the medical treatment of children and adolescents. In order to do so, the regulation provides for paediatric use marketing authorisations (PUMA) for previously authorised products no longer covered by intellectual property rights and also grants holders of such PUMA licenses further property rights. However, only two PUMA licenses have been applied for. Thus, the PUMA license instrument is hardly being used despite the fact that many medicinal products have a great potential for closing medical gaps for children and adolescents.In order to improve the situation regarding medicinal products for children and adolescents, this scientific symposium "More Medicines for Minors" intended to promote dialogue among the parties involved and to provide an opportunity to discuss reasons for the reluctance to apply for PUMA licenses. Speakers specialised in paediatric and adolescent medicine as well as those from licensing authorities, the Federal Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss, G‑BA), the pharmaceutical industry and the federal ministries presented problems and possible solutions from their point of view with the aim of making the PUMA license instrument more attractive.

The harmonisation of the legislation for medicinal products is an on-going process even after 40 years of development. The first step for harmonising the requirements for the marketing authorisation and monitoring took place with the introduction of the first pharmaceutical directive in 1965. Further components of European legislation such as directives, which have to be transposed into national law by the Member States, and regulations, which take effect immediately, have been adopted since then. The latest fundamental progress made in the process of harmonising the European market for medicinal products was the adoption of Directive 2004/27/EG in the framework of the Pharma-Review 2002. In addition to the existing centralised procedure and mutual recognition procedure a decentralised procedure and the enlargement of the area of authority of the European Medicines Agency were introduced. Lately new laws for medicinal products for children and advanced therapies were introduced through a regulation.