Europe’s parliament yesterday refused to sign off the accounts of the European Medicines Agency.

The move follows a recommendation earlier this year from the Committee on Budgetary Control, which said the sign off should be rejected over concerns over the independence of experts used by the EMA.

“MEPs believed there was no proper guarantee of the independence of experts hired to carry out scientific evaluations of human medicines and that some experts had conflicting interests in the case of the evaluation of the anorectic Benfluorex,” says a statement from the parliament.

When the budgetary committee raised its concerns in April the EMA said that it had addressed many of the concerns and had robust conflict of interest rules regarding expert advice.