Spain - Competition Authority Starts Investigation of Loyalty-Inducing Practices towards Pharmacies
- 13/03/2024
- News
The Spanish competition authority (CNMC) announced yesterday that it had conducted a dawn raid at the premises of an unidentified pharmaceutical firm at the end of February 2024 (see, attached press release in Spanish and English versions). The CNMC is probing that firm for practices that foster the loyalty of pharmacies to its business. If proven to exist, the CNMC is of the view that such practices would amount to an abuse of dominant position on the market for the distribution of medicines, health products, and parapharmaceutical products. For the CNMC these practices would qualify as a very serious breach of Article 2 of the Spanish competition law.
The CNMC has long considered the pharmaceutical sector as a prime enforcement target. In recent months, the CNMC has focused on business dealings with pharmacies. In December 2023, the CNMC opened an inquiry into the market for the sale of pharmaceuticals to pharmacies. The CNMC suspects specific pharmaceutical firms to have exchanged sensitive business information (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News & Insights of 7 December 2023). A few months earlier, it had started to investigate possibly anticompetitive practices in the market for the supply of digital pharmaceutical logistics tools for pharmacies (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News & Insights of 31 October 2023).
