Business cooperation at the time of COVID-19: The European Commission clears a cooperation agreement in the pharmaceutical sector
Business cooperation at the time of COVID-19: The European Commission clears a cooperation agreement in the pharmaceutical sector Introduction Competitors may react to disruption caused by deep economic crisis such as that caused by the outbreak of Covid-19 by entering into cooperation agreements. These agreements may take the shape of either cartel crisis purporting to reduce overcapacity or information exchange through which participants replace mutual competition between them with a coordination of their market activities [1] . While lawful cooperation between competitors may be necessary to deal with the crisis-provoked demand and supply shocks, these may also constitute restrictive business practices prohibited by antitrust rules [2] . Bearing in mind these opposing ends, several national competition authorities have issued guidance on how enforce antitrust rules to these practices [3] . competition law That said, this post considers the Medicine for Europe (MFE) case