The European Union has offered to change its laws so that Northern Ireland has access to new cancer treatments and other medicines at the same time as the rest of the UK.
Maroš Šefčovič made the new offer at a news conference today.
He said it showed how the Northern Ireland Protocol had the flexibility to address the various issues which had emerged around its operation.
The legislative proposal would mean new medicines approved by the UK could immediately circulate in Northern Ireland, with EU approval to follow in due course.
Mr Šefčovič said the offer would also mean no additional regulatory burdens or requirement for separate packaging.
"In a nutshell this will be possible because all regulatory functions of pharmaceutical companies supplying Great Britain to Northern Ireland can remain in the UK while no additional batch testing, manufacturing and licence authorisation or separate packaging is required."
There had been concerns that additional requirements under EU law, which applies to goods sent to Northern Ireland from Great Britain, would add cost which would prompt pharmaceutical companies to discontinue supply of some medicines.
It had also been suggested that a requirement for EU approval for medicines might mean a delay in life-saving drugs being available in Northern Ireland when they had been approved by UK regulators and were available in Britain.
In a statement the UK Brexit negotiator David Frost acknowledged progress had been made on the medicines issue.
But he said he did not believe it was yet close to delivering wider solutions to the protocol problems and the UK retained the right to trigger Article 16 mechanism if necessary.
