Moldova's New Pharmacy Law: What Changes if You Want to Open a Pharmacy

Pharmacies in Moldova still run under a law passed in 1993. The Ministry of Health wants to replace it, and the draft of the new Pharmacy Law, registered as no. 151/MS/AMDM/2025, is in public consultation until 1 October 2026. If it clears the Government and Parliament in its current form, it changes three things that matter to anyone thinking of opening a pharmacy: where you can open it, how long the permit you work under stays valid, and the ways you can reach customers in villages.

For now it is a draft, not a law. Below is what it proposes, what the rules look like today and what you can already do if you want a pharmacy.

What the new Pharmacy Law is and where it stands

The new Pharmacy Law is a draft prepared by the Ministry of Health together with the Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (AMDM), and it repeals Law no. 1456/1993 on pharmaceutical activity. Between 9 September and 1 October 2026 it is going through its fifth round of public consultation on particip.gov.md, where the draft text and its explanatory note are both published.

The first consultation took place in November 2024, so the text has already been rewritten several times. After this round it goes to the Government for approval and then to Parliament for a vote. The draft says the law takes effect three months after publication in the Official Gazette (Monitorul Oficial), but no publication date is known yet.

Why the Ministry wants a new law

The main argument is geography. The Ministry of Health works from 2023 data: the country had 1,604 pharmacies and branches, 1,067 in towns and 537 in villages. Yet almost 56% of people live in villages. That works out to roughly 101 pharmaceutical units per 100,000 residents in towns and only 39 in villages.

The state has already tried to close the gap through the “Pharmacy in Your Village” programme, which opened 135 subsidised pharmacies serving about 180,000 people. The new law no longer relies on subsidies alone. It changes the rules so that an existing pharmacy can reach the villages around it more easily. “We don’t have to choose between a permanent pharmacy in every village and nothing,” said Health Minister Alexandru Gasnaș.

What changes for someone opening a pharmacy

What is regulated	Today’s rule	What the draft proposes	What it means for a new pharmacy
Distance from another pharmacy	At least 250 m, and 500 m from a pharmacy that compounds medicines	The rule no longer appears in the law	You choose premises for customers, not for neighbours
Population in towns	One pharmacy per 3,000–4,000 residents, proven with a certificate from the town hall	This norm no longer appears either	The town hall certificate drops out of the file
The permit you work under	Five-year licence	Authorisation with no expiry	No renewal every five years
Villages without a pharmacy	A pharmacy or a branch	Branch pharmacies, pharmaceutical points, mobile units and medicine vending machines	One authorised pharmacy can serve several villages

Both rules in the first rows are written today in Article 19 of Law no. 1456/1993. The draft repeals the law without carrying them over, and puts a different limit in their place: village units can only be opened if the pharmacy responsible for them is within a road distance that allows supervision, supply and the pharmacist’s visits.

For villages without a pharmacy, the draft introduces the idea of a “parent” community pharmacy. Branch pharmacies, pharmaceutical points, mobile units and vending machines do not operate on their own. They report to the parent pharmacy, which carries professional responsibility for them. A coordinating pharmacist must be physically present at least two days a week and can supervise remotely the rest of the time. A pharmaceutical point can be staffed by a pharmacy assistant or by a health worker who has completed a nationally certified retraining programme. Health workers already working in rural pharmaceutical units get up to 24 months to complete that retraining.

A mobile pharmacy unit only serves villages with no pharmacy, branch or pharmaceutical point, on a route and timetable notified to AMDM. It does not compound medicines, does not dispense medicines containing narcotic or psychotropic substances or precursors, and must monitor temperature continuously. Mobile units run as a three-year pilot from the date the law takes effect, after which the Ministry decides whether to continue. Vending machines also start as a pilot and may only dispense over-the-counter medicines from a list set by ministerial order.

A few changes apply to every pharmacy, not just the ones in villages:

• rural pharmacies, including branches, pharmaceutical points and mobile units, pay no authorisation fees for five years after the law takes effect;
• online sales of medicines are regulated under EU Directive 2001/83/EC and remain open only to authorised pharmacies;
• the trade markup on medicines is set uniformly for the whole country, with village pharmacies supported through separate funding and fee waivers;
• anyone who, together with affiliated companies, runs at least 30 pharmaceutical units must keep at least one full-service parent pharmacy in every locality where they already operate;
• prescriptions issued in an EU member state are recognised in Moldova.

Why the draft matters to an investor

If you look at pharmacies as a business with several units rather than a single shop, the draft changes the numbers in a few concrete ways.

The market has room to grow exactly where it is thinnest today. Villages have 39 pharmaceutical units per 100,000 residents against 101 in towns, even though more than half the population lives there. The network is already growing: according to the explanatory note, the number of pharmacies and branches rose by about 16% between 2018 and 2023, from 1,384 to 1,604.

The limits that decided where you could open go away. With no 250-metre rule and no population norm, location becomes a commercial decision, and an authorisation with no expiry takes the five-year renewal out of the business plan.

A network becomes cheaper to extend into villages. Around a parent pharmacy you can run branches, pharmaceutical points and mobile units that no longer have to be full pharmacies with a pharmacist on site every day. For five years after the law takes effect, rural units pay no authorisation fees, and the law provides separate support mechanisms for village pharmacies.

The rules also move closer to the European Union’s. Online sales are regulated under the EU directive, and prescriptions from member states are recognised in Moldova. For an investor already working in the European market, that means fewer new rules to learn.

Two things still need to go into the calculation. The text can change before the vote, and every parent pharmacy must be run by a pharmacist in charge, so the plan needs people, not just capital. You can, however, own the company entirely from abroad and register it remotely by power of attorney, as explained in our guide for foreign founders.

What you can do now if you want a pharmacy

Today’s rules apply until the new law takes effect, so a pharmacy opened this autumn respects the 250-metre distance and receives the five-year licence. The licence costs 3,250 lei, but only 1,625 lei if the company was registered no more than a year before the application. The order matters: company first, then licence.

The full route, with the AMDM licence, the town hall notifications and the right CAEM codes, is on our page about how to open a pharmacy in Moldova. If you are thinking of a network, the company you open now for a pharmacy in town is the same one that will be able to open branches and points in villages once the law allows it. The text can still change before the vote, so have the village plan ready but start it after the law is published.

Register the company for your pharmacy with us

We set the company up so you can apply for the licence straight away: the right legal form, usually an LLC (SRL), the founding documents, the CAEM code for retail sale of pharmaceutical products, a registered address, filing with the Public Services Agency, the bank account and, if the director comes from abroad, the IDNP personal number. Registration takes about three working days, and our services and prices are on the corporate services page.

Write to us with where you want to open the pharmacy or network, who will run it and whether you are investing from abroad, and we will tell you which documents you need for the company and for the licence. We will update this article when the draft reaches the Government.