The European Medicines Agency moves closer to U.S.-style advisory committee meetings in public; two national referendums next month could hit Scotland’s biotech industry and Switzerland’s health insurance sector.

Actavis’ proposal to buy Forest Labs for $25 billion in stock and cash was driven by consolidating customers and fierce competition in traditional Western markets. Different pressures, namely the tough-to-manage patent cliff, as well as leadership succession issues and investor unrest, drove Forest into the arms of a suitor.

This month’s European Notebook scans the horizon for European legislative and regulatory changes affecting the pharmaceutical industry in the next 12 months, including drug price freezes in Germany and the U.K., the heated debate over clinical trial data transparency, the start of the EU unitary patent, and more.

Academic drug-discovery collaborations with industry usually are limited by restraints companies place on how much of their compound libraries they’ll share in a collaboration. Plus the week’s top deals, including M&A transactions between Teva and NuPathe, and Par Pharmaceuticals and JHP.