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TL;DRA re-imported medicine (Reimport) is a medicine that was originally manufactured for the German market, exported to another country, and then brought back and sold again in Germany. The reimporter buys the product abroad, where it may be cheaper, repackages and relabels it for German requirements, and places it back on the German market under its own Pharmazentralnummer (PZN).
A re-import is often mentioned in the same breath as a Parallelimport, but the two are not identical, and the distinction matters as soon as you read wholesale prices or try to filter import products out of a list. The dividing line is simply where the medicine originally came from, and everything else, the price logic and the identifiers, follows from that.
All three are ways a medicine crosses a border into the German market, but they differ in origin, scale and legal basis. The table separates them.
| Type | Origin | Scale and purpose | Legal note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reimport | Originally made for the German market, exported, then brought back to Germany | Commercial, for general sale, own PZN | Same product and manufacturer origin as the German original |
| Parallelimport | Sourced from another EU or EEA market where it was first placed on the market | Commercial, for general sale, own PZN | Same product, different intended market of first sale |
| Einzelimport | A medicine not licensed in Germany, lawfully marketed abroad | Ordered by a pharmacy for one patient in small quantity, on prescription | §73 Abs. 3 AMG, only when no comparable licensed medicine is available in Germany |
The first two are commercial import channels: the product is licensed and available in Germany, and the importer simply offers a cheaper source of the identical medicine. An Einzelimport is different in kind. It is the narrow route under §73 Abs. 3 AMG by which a pharmacy can bring in a medicine that is not available in Germany at all, for one named patient, in small quantity, on a prescription, and only when no identical or comparably dosed medicine for the same indication is available domestically. Re-import and Parallelimport are about price. Einzelimport is about access.
A medicine bought abroad does not meet German market requirements out of the box, so the importer has to adapt it before it can be dispensed. The work is regulated and visible on the pack.
The key fact is that a re-import is a separate article with its own PZN. It is not the same database record as the original German pack, even though it contains the same medicine. That has two consequences that come up constantly in practice.
First, price. A re-import is offered because it is cheaper than the original, and the statutory framework has long steered pharmacies towards the cheaper import. The import preference in §129 Abs. 1 SGB V still exists, but its terms were reformed by the GKV-Finanzstabilisierungsgesetz. The current rule is a tiered price-advantage test, sometimes called the 15/15/5 rule: for a reference price up to 100 euros the import must be at least 15 percent cheaper, between 100 and 300 euros at least 15 euros cheaper, and above 300 euros at least 5 percent cheaper. The older flat threshold and the fixed import savings quota are not the current state, so any list logic still built on the old numbers should be rechecked against the reformed clause.
The rationale is worth stating plainly, because it explains why the identifier work exists at all. The legislator wanted price competition on branded medicines, and imports supply exactly that: the same product from the same manufacturer, sourced in a cheaper market, undercutting the domestic list price. A re-import is not a different medicine and not a generic. It is the identical product on a different price line, which is why it needs its own record rather than sharing the original's.
Second, identifiers. If you want to understand or filter re-imports, you follow the identifier links, not the trade name. In the article master data a re-import carries a reference to the PZN der Originalpackung, the original pack it derives from, and it is grouped with its peers through an Importgruppennummer. Those two fields are what let you say "this PZN is a reimport of that original" and, if you need to, exclude the whole import group from a working list.
This is also why trade name alone is an unreliable filter. A re-import and its original often share a very similar name, so a purchasing or dispensing rule that keys on the name risks catching the wrong records or missing whole import groups. The identifier relationship is the stable handle, and it is the reason the comparison block is built around PZN references rather than product titles.
On pharmazie.com the import relationships are carried in the article comparison block on each article detail page, so you can move from an original pack to its re-imports and back through the identifiers rather than by guessing from the trade name.
One honest limitation: these fields describe the identifier relationship between a re-import and its original, not a purchasing recommendation. They tell you which PZN is a reimport of which original and how the import group is structured, but whether a given re-import is currently the cheapest or in stock is a separate, fast-moving question you settle against live price and availability data.
