EU competition probe widens, EAEPC claims

The European Commission's investigation into possible violations of competition rules by pharmaceutical firms has been widened from the original remit of looking into payments by research-based drugmakers to allegedly ensure that generic versions of their products enter the market at a later stage than might otherwise be the case. The issue arises from a series of court cases in the USA, brought by the Federal Trade Commission, which have had mixed results (Marketletters passim).

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a number of drug firms and related organizations have been sent questionnaires, in what some have argued is an information gathering exercise with a view to widening the scope of the EC enquiry. For example, Heinz Kobelt, the secretary general of the parallel trade organization the EAEPC, told the Marketletter than he had received a list of questions, which related to the impact of litigation and other tactics to control or prevent the re-importation of drugs across European Union borders.

Among the areas which appear to be on the EC's agenda is the direct-to-pharmacy distribution model launched in the UK by Pfizer and AstraZeneca (Marketletters passim), despite these having been broadly considered acceptable to the UK's Office of Fair Trading.