The European Commission (EC) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will collaborate to conduct inspections of pharmaceutical manufacturing sites globally. On June 17, the Transatlantic Economic Council, a bilateral body created to foster economic cooperation between the EU and US, laid out 15 projects designed to boost cooperation and 2 to attain more good manufacturing practices (GMP) inspection coverage while cutting the administrative burden. The action plan was drafted by the EC in collaboration with the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) and the FDA based on presentations made by industry during a workshop held in Brussels in late 2007. EU commissioner Matus Ferech says the pilot programs are intended to explore the feasibility of joint inspection teams investigating manufacturing sites in both the EU and US, and in third countries, for example, Asia. The pilot phase will also help advance procedural cooperation to come up with a common format for reporting inspected facilities for EU and the US. To widen GMP inspection coverage abroad and better identify manufacturing sites producing active pharmaceutical ingredients the action plan calls for sharing inspection schedules, results and information on inspected sites. “There is a genuine feeling that there are so many overseas facilities that it would be impossible to inspect them all,” says Ferech. Transatlantic cooperation between the EMEA and FDA resulted, in June, in the joint validation of seven biomarkers for drug-induced renal toxicity.