EU Competition Law and Pharmaceuticals

编辑狼分ter, Full Professor of Law, Markets and Behavior, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Coordinating Specialist Enforcement Official, Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), Marcel Canoy, Endowed Professor of Health Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Economic Adviser to Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) and Jotte Mulder, Antitrust attorney, Pels Rijcken, The Hague and Assistant Professor, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

This timely book discusses the application of the EU competition rules to pharmaceuticals, covering the prohibitions on anticompetitive agreements and abuse of dominance, and merger control. It carefully considers the balance between competition and innovation, as well as between competition and regulation, and concludes that competition and regulation are not alternatives, but complementary, and that novel ways of taking into account risk and real innovation through competition assessments have been developed.

‘Pharmaceutical and vaccine markets are highly complex. In European healthcare systems, the state is the major purchaser, and so ordinary rules of competition law are insufficient in themselves to respond to the various dynamics at play: cost-effective innovation; access to medicines; burden on the public purse. But competition law is one of the aspects of the relevant regulatory toolkit, so it’s crucial to understand how it applies. This cross-disciplinary and timely book goes well beyond the superficial, in its analysis and critique of contemporary developments and the direction of travel of European competition law as it applies to pharmaceuticals.’
– Tamara Hervey, City, University of London, UK