The Italian Competition Authority opens a sector enquiry into the market for vaccines for human use

The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has recently launched a sector enquiry into the market for human vaccines out of some concerns about how competition works in this sector (IC50-Mercatidei vaccini per uso umano or Markets for vaccines for human use). The ICA pointed out that the national health authorities tendentially buy the supplies of vaccines they need through centralized competitive tender procedures. Some local authorithies, however, buy the vaccines from suppliers they choose with single tender procedures that they organize. The likely the result is that the prices paid for by the latter may be different from those paid for the same products by the health authorities that organized centralized tender procedures. In addition, a given vaccine could not be substituted with other medicinal products having a different therapeutic function. Therefore, from a competition law viewpoint each vaccine may constitute a distinct product market. Suppliers of vaccine may have a monopoly position in such markets, thereby being capable of applying selective pricing to procuring authorities. Moreover, the ICA seems to fear that manufactures of vaccines may have put in place anti-competitive conducts with regard to tender procedures.
The purpose of the sector enquiry is then to i) examine the working of competition in the markets for vaccines for human use; ii) look for competition problems, beraing in mind the peculiarities of the national statutory regime; and iii) assess the efficiencies of the procedures employed by health authorities to select suppliers of vaccines.
The IC-50 sector enquiry confirms tha the active stance of the ICA in preserving the health of competition in the health sector, which accounts for a large share of Italy's public expenses.



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