Quality & complianceOfficial

Estonian regulator warns online medicine orders from abroad may be unlawful and can be seized at customs

🇪🇪 Ravimiamet · Wed 28 Oct 2026

Ravimiamet says a low price and promised delivery do not make a foreign web shop authorised to sell medicines, and customs detentions of illicit medicines remain high.

Ravimiamet, the Estonian Medicines Agency, has warned consumers that a foreign online shop may advertise cheap medicines and offer convenient shipping to Estonia without having any right to sell them. Nor, it stresses, does such an offer mean that ordering the product into Estonia is permitted.

In Estonia, only legal online pharmacies may sell medicines over the internet. The agency says buyers from these outlets can be confident of the product's authenticity and quality, and that it has been properly stored and transported throughout the supply chain. With an unauthorised seller, the origin, content and storage conditions are unknown. The product could be falsified, which could seriously endanger health, and it may not exist at all, leaving the buyer without either the money or the medicine.

The agency also points to restrictions on cross-border orders. Ordering medicines by post into Estonia from outside the European Economic Area, such as from India, the United States or the United Kingdom, is not allowed. Orders from EEA countries are not unrestricted either: a foreign online pharmacy may operate lawfully in its own country, but the medicine sent to Estonia must still meet Estonian requirements, so a product on sale abroad may not be allowed into the country. Customs may detain consignments that do not comply.

According to the agency, customs detained medicines of illegal origin in postal and courier consignments 439 times in 2025. By early October 2026 there had already been 374 such cases.

Ravimiamet advises people who cannot visit a pharmacy in person to use a legal Estonian online pharmacy, which can supply both over-the-counter and certain prescription medicines. Such pharmacies can be recognised by the common EU logo; clicking it leads to the agency's website, where users can check whether the pharmacy is entitled to sell medicines online.

What it means for your team

  • Medicines bought from unauthorised online sellers sit outside the regulated supply chain, so quality, storage and authenticity cannot be assured, which raises falsified-medicine risk.
  • Customs detentions of illicit medicine parcels in Estonia (374 by early October 2026, against 439 in all of 2025) show continuing enforcement activity.
  • Teams handling patient-facing materials or adverse-event reports in Estonia may encounter products sourced from non-authorised online sellers and should be alert to this route of supply.
  • Lawful operation of a foreign online pharmacy in its own country does not guarantee that a product may be shipped to Estonia, as national requirements still apply.

Official source: Ravimiamet ↗

Article written by VigiEye from the official source (Ravimiamet). AI-assisted; check the source before acting.

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