European citizens need access to innovative and affordable healthcare products and services. Effective competition means that companies producing pharmaceuticals, healthcare devices, or other health-related products and services compete with one another based on the quality and price of their products and services.
The development cycles for innovative drugs are usually risky and lengthy and entail high development costs. Certain practices of pharmaceutical companies to protect their exclusivity may, under certain circumstances, lead to violations of EU competition law. These include, for example, patent clusters, patent thickets and patent settlements, which aim at prolonging market-exclusivity, and other anti-competitive strategies that result in higher prices. These types of behaviour entail not only the risk of price increases but can also take away the incentive to innovate.
The Commission’s main enforcement actions in antitrust and mergers in the pharmaceutical sector are described in its updated Report on competition enforcement in the pharmaceutical sector 2018-2022 (available in DE/EN/FR and all other EU languages). The Report was drawn up in close co-operation with the national competition authorities of the EU Member States. It explains how antitrust decisions adopted by national competition authorities and the Commission (finding an infringement or accepting binding commitments in antitrust investigations) during that period, as well as Commission merger decisions, contributed to affordable and innovative medicines for EU patients.