In December 2023, the European Commission presented a proposal for a new Regulation on the protection of animals during transport, revising the existing Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2005. This initiative is part of a broader legislative package to reform the current EU rules on animal welfare as a response to longstanding concerns about the welfare of animals transported for commercial purposes, international transport of farm animals in particular. 
EARA welcomes this updated animal welfare package, recognising the importance of improving standards and ensuring the humane treatment of animals across the EU. However, EARA is concerned about the potential scope of the proposed revision and the risk that research-related transport could be unintentionally included in the regulation. The transport of animals for scientific purposes takes place in a fundamentally different regulatory and operational context and is already comprehensively regulated under EU Directive 2010/63. Including these animals in the new general transport regulation would create overlaps and inconsistencies between the two legal frameworks. 
In Q4-2024, EARA organised a meeting in Brussels with the Permanent Representatives for Animal Welfare from ten EU Member States, where EARA members representing the complete research supply chain (breeders, transport companies and drug discovery companies) explained the potential impact of the proposed revision on the research sector. In 2025, the Council published the consolidated Articles of the proposal, which will form the basis for continued negotiations in 2026. This text confirms that the critical parts of the Regulation (concerning fitness thresholds, biosecurity, journey times and temperature thresholds) will not apply to animals used in scientific procedures governed by Directive 2010/63/EU, when transported directly between authorised breeders, suppliers or users. 
In the European Parliament, negotiations remain stalled following ongoing disagreements between the file’s two co-rapporteurs, Tilly Metz (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg) and Daniel Buda (EPP, Romania). At the beginning of 2026, there is no established timeline for resuming work, and the adoption of the co-rapporteurs’ joint position has been postponed. In the meantime, amendments rejecting the proposal entirely have been tabled by MEPs from right-wing and far-right groups.  
Work in 2026 will focus on developing a General Approach that can serve as the Council’s formal position in future trilogue negotiations with the Parliament—once both institutions are ready to begin.  

The European Commission published its Roadmap towards phasing out animal testing for chemical safety assessments on 1 June 2026. It is a document that outlines the EU’s planned actions to accelerate the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal use in chemical safety testing in collaboration with regulators and other stakeholders. 
The Commission pledged to develop this roadmap in response to the 2023 European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics – Commit to a Europe without Animal Testing. The initiative, organised by a coalition of animal rights NGOs, gathered 1.2 million signatures across the EU. Despite what the title claims, it also includes a proposal on a phase out of animal use across all domains of scientific research. 

Short-, medium- and long-term actions 
The roadmap is built on three pillars: 
- Making change happen towards phasing out animal use 
- Keeping Europe at the forefront of research and innovation 
- Working together in Europe and beyond 

With the actions listed under these three pillars, the Commission envisages the gradual replacement of animal testing for chemical safety assessments across 15 legislative domains, including chemicals for industrial and consumer uses, pesticides and biocides, pharmaceuticals, and food and feed additives. 
The concrete recommendations by the Commission are listed under three categories: short-, medium- and long-term actions. While the short-term actions concern approaches that can be implemented immediately or within a short timeframe — envisaged to be completed by 2029 — the medium- and long-term actions are not bound to a specified timeline. 

Core conditions 
An important core condition the roadmap sets out is that non-animal approaches ‘must deliver a level of protection equivalent to that of currently established methods’. In addition, the document acknowledges that direct replacement is not possible everywhere, in particular for the more complex endpoints, such as repeated dose toxicity and reproductive toxicity. As non-animal approaches yield different information from animal tests, the text states that these complex endpoints will require a transition to a ‘new scientific framework’ with examination of different parameters from multiple methods; a ‘paradigm shift’. 

Implementation 
While the regulators, both on Member State and EU level, are described as playing a pivotal role in gathering information and feedback, they will be supported by a Roadmap Steering Team which offers seats to stakeholders including Member States, industry, NGOs and academia. The Steering Team will ensure coordination between the other organisational structures to support the roadmap’s implementation. A call for participation in the Roadmap Steering Team will be published and the team is expected to be operational later in 2026. 
(BOX) The publication of the roadmap by the European Commission is an important milestone in the EU’s ambition to phase out the use of animals in research and testing. EARA is monitoring developments relating to the establishment of the roadmap’s steering structure, including any forthcoming call for participation in the steering group, and keeping our members informed of opportunities to engage with the process. 
 
New approach methodologies and the 3Rs 
The Commission chose to use the term ‘non-animal approaches’ throughout the document instead of the currently more commonly used ‘new approach methodologies (NAMs)’. This was a deliberate choice demonstrating that the Commission intends to steer clear of the discussion on what NAMs actually stands for and what it means. The Commission defines non-animal approaches as ‘methods that fully replace the use of living animals’. Though this definition of non-animal approaches is limited to replacement only, the roadmap in its entirety is clear in including reduction and refinement as important intermediate steps where full replacement is not feasible. With that, the 3Rs principle remains at the core of the Commission’s strategy. 
It is important to note that the Roadmap is a Commission communication, not a legislative instrument. It does not itself amend REACH, the Cosmetics Regulation, the Plant Protection Products Regulation, or any of the other frameworks covering the 15 legislative domains it addresses. Its short-, medium- and long-term actions set out an intended direction of travel and a coordination structure — via the Roadmap Steering Team — for pursuing that direction, but any actual change to animal use requirements in these areas will still require the normal legislative or regulatory procedures, including scientific validation of proposed new approach methodologies and, where relevant, formal amendment of the underlying legislation. 

Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) are among the most widely used non-human primates (NHPs) in biomedical research, playing a critical role in immunology, oncology, vaccine development, pharmacologyand regenerative medicine. Six of the 25 most prescribed drugs were developed with their help, and macaques were essential to preclinical testing of COVID-19 vaccines, including those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Janssen. 
However, the global supply of NHPs has been under severe pressure since 2020, when China — historically the primary source of purpose-bred macaques — imposed an export ban at the onset of the COVID -19 pandemic. The impact of the export ban was felt across the US, the EU and the UK, with prices more than doubling and some research programmes being delayed or abandoned altogether. The shortage has raised serious strategic concerns: as the US, China and Europe compete for the same limited pool of research animals, the availability of NHPs has become not just a scientific issue but a geopolitical one. China's domestic pharmaceutical industry continues to benefit from unrestricted access to its own primate populations, potentially giving it a competitive advantage in drug development while researchers elsewhere face growing constraints. 
EU Directive 2010/63/EU includes a requirement under Article 10 that took effect from November 2022, non-human primates used in research must be at least second-generation captive-bred (F2) or sourced from self-sustaining colonies — effectively restricting the use of F1 animals, whose parents were taken from the wild. The aim was to end the EU's reliance on wild capture for breeding purposes. However, the European Commission's own second feasibility study, published in 2022, concluded that it is not currently possible to determine whether the aspiration of sourcing NHPs exclusively from self-sustaining colonies can be achieved, and that given recent changes in supply, demand and breeding practices, this goal is unlikely to be met for all commonly used primate species in the foreseeable future. Competent authorities in Member States may grant exemptions on the basis of scientific justification, but the restriction nonetheless places additional pressure on European researchers at a time when global NHP availability is already severely constrained. Combined with China's ongoing export ban, the F1 restriction risks further reducing Europe's capacity to conduct essential preclinical research and could drive studies to jurisdictions with lower welfare standards — undermining the welfare improvements the Directive was designed to achieve. 
Against this backdrop, the international trade in long-tailed macaques has come under increasing scrutiny from animal rights organisations, which have sought to restrict or halt the supply of research animals through various campaigns. These campaigns have targeted multiple fronts simultaneously — from international conservation frameworks (CITES and IUCN) to national endangered species legislation — often using contested and ultimately non-scientific claims, many of which have been rejected. 
In 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reclassified the long-tailed macaque as "Endangered" — a decision that has been strongly contested by the scientific community. The National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR), citing peer-reviewed evidence, challenged the IUCN's assessment, presenting peer-reviewed evidence that the underlying population data were flawed and misrepresented. Notably, the IUCN itself recognises the long-tailed macaque as one of the world's most invasive species. In October 2024, the US Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a petition by PETA and other groups to list the species under the US Endangered Species Act, finding the petition did not present credible evidence of population-level threats. Despite this, the IUCN retained its "Endangered" designation in October 2025, a decision NABR described as bowing to pressure from animal activists in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. 
Efforts to restrict supply through CITES have also been unsuccessful. In February 2025, the CITES Standing Committee rejected a proposed trade suspension on long-tailed macaques from Cambodia, with no country speaking in favour of the measure. Japan, the US, Canada and others emphasised the need for evidence-based decision-making. The Committee agreed to allow the CITES Secretariat to conduct a thorough assessment and send a formal delegation to Cambodia. In November 2025, the Standing Committee released a comprehensive evaluation confirming that Cambodia's breeding and export practices meet international regulatory standards, citing well-coordinated customs procedures and strong traceability systems. Following the report, the increasingly adversarial stance of animal rights groups such as PETA called for the CITES leadership to resign — a response that underscored the increasingly adversarial stance of animal rights groups toward the institutions tasked with regulating international wildlife trade. 
EARA continues to monitor these developments closely and works with partners including NABR to ensure that policy decisions affecting the supply of research animals are grounded in sound science rather than ideological campaigns. Maintaining ethical, well-regulated supply chains for NHPs is essential — not only for ongoing biomedical research, but for global pandemic preparedness. As the COVID-19 experience demonstrated, restrictions on NHP availability directly affect the speed and capacity of vaccine and therapeutic development, with potentially significant consequences for public health worldwide. 

In 2023, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics: Sign for a Europe without animal testing” gathered more than 1.4 million signatures. However, despite its title, the ECI went far beyond the cosmetics testing ban already in place since 2013. It called not only for stronger controls on testing related to cosmetics and other consumer products, but also for a comprehensive roadmap to phase out all animal use in scientific research and regulatory testing across Europe. 
In response, EARA warned that the initiative’s broader aims risk undermining medical and safety research essential for human and animal health. The complete elimination of animal research, before scientifically validated non-animal methods (NAMs) are available and approved for regulatory use, would jeopardise progress in biomedical science, drug development, and environmental safety assessment. 
A recurring claim made by organisations behind the ECI is that the widespread adoption of NAMs is being held back by tradition or by researchers’ reliance on “old-fashioned” methods. EARA strongly rejects this characterisation. Across Europe, the scientific community is actively investing in, developing and applying NAMs wherever they can answer the research or regulatory question. The real barriers are not resistance to change, but scientific limitations, validation requirements and regulatory acceptance, all of which are necessary to ensure that new methods provide reliable and protective data. 
The European Commission’s response to the ECI acknowledged both the importance of advancing alternatives and the reality that animal research remains necessary in some areas for the foreseeable future. The Commission committed to supporting NAM development and improving their uptake by means of drafting a “phase-out roadmap”, while stopping short of endorsing a blanket phase-out of animal research. The first roadmap that is currently being drafted is the “Roadmap Towards Phasing Out Animal Testing for Chemical Safety Assessments”. 
Read EARA’s full statement here. 

In May 2020, the EU Commission’s Reference Laboratory for Alternatives to Animal Testing (EURL ECVAM) published a report that called for an end to the use of animals in antibody production and research. The report stated that the use of animal-derived antibodies for research and treatment of diseases, including Covid-19, is no longer fit for purpose, and that relevant funding bodies should avoid financing such projects. 
EARA has challenged these recommendations in a joint report together with the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Association (EFPIA) and AnimalHealthEurope in collaboration with leading European scientists. 
The report called for ‘real evidence’ to be produced before the sector could move away from animal-derived antibodies. Switching to only non-animal-derived antibodies would have serious negative implications on research, innovation and discovery of new life-saving drugs for patients and animal health.  
A survey among EARA and EFPIA member organisations showed that just 15% thought that the replacement of animal-derived antibodies was possible in the near future. 
EARA/EFPIA has recommended a ‘complementary approach’ between non-animal and animal-derived technologies and the establishment of a multi-stakeholder platform that will address the areas where non-animal antibodies can be used, while protecting the availability of animal-derived antibodies in areas where they are clearly still essential.  
The report has been submitted to the National Contact Points of EU Directive 2010/63/EU, for consideration in each member state and has been circulated to policymakers and the EURL ECVAM committee. 
Read the full report here. 

EARA expressed deep concern over recent developments in Ontario, Canada, including toxic statements made by Ontario Premier Doug Ford regarding biomedical research involving dogs. 
In 2025, public attention suddenly focused on dog-based cardiac research conducted at the Lawson Research Institute at St. Joseph’s Health Care in London, Ontario. Whistleblower accounts described studies involving induced, prolonged heart attacks in dogs, carried out within a facility that had not been widely visible to the public, fuelling intense public outrage and demands for action. However, three separate independent reviews have concluded that the dog research conducted at St. Joseph’s complied with all regulatory, ethical and professional standards, finding no evidence of illegality or misconduct. Western University’s Animal Care Committee completed the first review in September 2025, followed by the Canadian Council on Animal Care in October 2025. Both studies found that allegations of animal mistreatment were unsubstantiated. An independent third-party review commissioned by St. Joseph’s Health Care itself, whose findings were released in February 2026, reached the same conclusion.Ontario Premier Doug Ford publicly condemned dog and cat research and said the province would move to ban it, at one point using threats to “hunt down” scientists conducting research that had been legally approved and ethically reviewed. Around the same time, the Lawson Research Institute announced the immediate termination of all animal-based studies using dogs. The institution has stated that this decision resulted from "consultations with provincial authorities".   
This political interference in evidence-based decision-making will be detrimental to biomedical research in Canada. Dogs are used in biomedical research because they have certain similarities with humans (in their genetics, anatomy and physiology) which are not present in other animals. This physiological compatibility currently makes dogs crucial for specific types of research, particularly in cardiovascular medicine, toxicology testing and drug development. Rigorous ethical oversight already exists and the scientific community in Canada strongly supports the development of new approach methodologies (NAMs) that can complement and ultimately replace or reduce the use of animals in research. 
Rather than undermining scientific processes through political pressure, governments should support increased funding for biomedical research, including NAMs development, while maintaining the regulatory frameworks that ensure that necessary animal research is conducted responsibly. 
Read EARA’s complete statement on political interference in medical research in Canada. 

Developments in the Netherlands in 2025 underscored ongoing political and societal tensions around primate research. In October, the Dutch Senate approved the 2026 science budget, including a parliamentary amendment that will progressively redirect public funding away from primate research at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC), rising to 100% allocation to alternatives by 2030. 
The proposal immediately raised alarm across the Dutch and European research and health community. Ahead of the vote, a joint letter, co-led by EARA and signed by major organisations, urged senators to pause and properly weigh the consequences. That pressure initially worked: senators from multiple parties delayed the vote, requesting written questions to clarify what the amendment would mean in practice for research capacity, expertise and welfare standards at BPRC. Nevertheless, the Dutch Senate ultimately approved the budget including the amendment. 
This is another example of political pressure on animal research that ignores scientific reality and real-life consequences. An independent committee of experts that reviewed the importance of NHP research at the request of the same Dutch Parliament published their findings earlier in the year. In response, the Minister of Science stated that research at the BPRC should be maintained, and explicitly cautioned against politicians deciding which research should or should not take place. 
The scientific community also expressed its concerns regarding this type of political pressure via a stakeholder survey conducted by the National Committee for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes (NCad). Particularly in neuroscience and safety testing, there is scepticism among researchers towards the current Dutch approach to a transition to animal-free innovation, due to a lack of viable alternatives. 
Read the letter to the Dutch Senate, co-lead by EARA.

Case study: Government funding for non-human primate research in the Netherlands