EC carries out more raids on pharma companies
This article was originally published in Scrip
The European Commission carried out more surprise raids on October 6th on pharmaceutical companies suspected of anticompetitive practices, it has confirmed.
The commission said in a statement that it had "reason to believe that the provisions of the EC Treaty prohibiting restrictive business practices and/or the abuse of a dominant market position (Articles 81 and 82) may have been infringed". It would not say which companies had been targeted or where the raids had taken place, but Sanofi-Aventis confirmed to Scrip hat it had been inspected.
The news comes a week after Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for competition policy, warned that there would be more cases brought against pharmaceutical companies in the wake of the pharmaceutical sector inquiry.
"We are now capitalising on our pharmaceutical sector inquiry with new cases," she said in an address to the European Parliament's committee on economic and monetary affairs last week.
A commission spokesperson told Scrip that the economic crisis was putting a strain on healthcare budgets and that it was therefore "important to make sure that there [were] no undue delays of generic entry".
The commission said it was aware of 200 settlements between innovator firms and generics companies when it released its inquiry report in July, but it would not comment on whether the new cases bear any relation to these.
However, the spokesperson said that the commission did not "consider all settlements to be problematic from an antitrust perspective" and that it acknowledged settlements to be an effective way of solving disputes between originators and generics companies.
She added that "defensive patenting and interventions before national administration would merit our attention", as highlighted in the final inquiry report.
The European Commission has already brought at least two antitrust cases against pharmaceutical companies. It announced one case – against Servier and a number of generics firms – as it issued its final inquiry report earlier this year (scripnews.com, June 8th, 2009). This involved a settlement between the French company and several generics firms, including Krka, Lupin and Teva, which the commission said might hinder the entry of generic perindopril.
The spokesperson also pointed to another case that the commission brought against Boehringer Ingelheim in February 2007, almost a year before the dawn raids were carried out on companies suspected of infringing EU competition law. In this case, the commission was concerned about "misuse of the patent system to exclude potential competition in the area of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease", it said in a statement issued at the time.