In 2019, YouAct- the European Youth Network on Sexual and Reproductive Rights partnered up with The European Consortium for Emergency Contraception (ECEC)  and launched a participatory survey in order to better understand how access to and availability of emergency contraception pills is through community pharmacies in our region.

We are now happy to introduce the survey report, which focuses on five countries: Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta, Spain and Sweden.

Community pharmacies play a very important role in ensuring access to EC pills, with the big majority of pharmacies carrying ECPs (even in countries where they are entitled not to). However, findings point out that individuals are not being systematically offered a choice of postcoital contraception methods in every pharmacy of our sample.

Access to the highest standard of care in post-coital contraception remains uneven within and among countries in Europe: Individuals are likely to have different experiences and outcomes when procuring EC, depending on what European country they are in, and also on what pharmacy they walk in.

YouAct is very proud of our partnership with ECEC and our combined efforts to conduct this participatory survey. We Thank the ECEC for their support and we hope to continue our collaboration beyond this project in the fight for SRHR for young people.

Read and download the report here.