European Commission Carries Out Dawn Raid against Supplier of Cardiovascular Medical Devices
- 20/09/2023
- News
On 19 September 2023, the European Commission (the Commission) and an unspecified national competition authority jointly carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of an as yet anonymous supplier of medical devices for cardiovascular applications (see, attached press release). The targeted firm is suspected of abusive conduct in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
While short on detail, the Commission’s press release inevitably prompts speculation as to whether European competition authorities consider increasing their enforcement activities in the medical devices industry. That sector would not seem to have been the subject of the close scrutiny which the pharmaceutical sector has had to endure.
But there are some notable exceptions. For example, at the end of 2022, Autoriteit Consument & Markt, the Dutch competition authority (ACM), published a study exploring the functioning of 63 markets for a variety of medical devices. ACM found about half of these markets to present some form of risk for competition and it examined in greater detail three high-risk markets involving radiotherapy, heart prostheses and implants, and dialysis and blood purification.
For its part, the Italian competition authority (Autorità garante della concorrenza e del mercato) dismissed in May 2021 a complaint that the healthcare businesses of General Electric, Philips and Siemens had allegedly used exclusionary tactics to stop competitors from servicing their medical diagnostic equipment.
At about the same time, in July 2021, the Portuguese competition authority (Autoridade da Concorrência) imposed a fine on Natus Medical (Natus) which had prevented its distributors of several medical devices from making passive sales in each other’s sales territories. Natus had also applied customer restrictions.
