Under the bill, medicines, which do not require a prescription, could be ordered and delivered online.
“This is madness,” said Gilles Bonnefond, the president of the USPO, an umbrella group which represents dispensing chemists.
“The health ministry only recently decided to take moves to reduce the consumption of paracetamol and ibuprofene and now we will be encouraging such sales online.”
Pharmacists in France are also concerned by the recommendation from the country’s competition authority that the sale of some medicines be authorized in supermarkets.
'Ready to fight'
France’s 25,000 pharmacists intend to resist moves to allow the easier sale of pharmaceuticals.
4,200 have already replied to a questionnaire sent to them by the USPO and “90 per cent are hostile …. 97 per cent are ready to fight” against these developments, says Bonnefond.
When in 2014 Emmanuel Macron, then economy minister, attempted to break their monopoly, pharmacies throughout the country closed down for the day and the idea was dropped that evening.
Online sales are already allowed but only from existing pharmacies' websites.
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