German drug price fixing penalties
Germany's Cartel Office (BKA) has imposed fines totaling 615,000 euros ($905,340) on pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies and pharmacy federations for drug price fixing. A total of 450,000 euros in fines has been imposed on nine state pharmacy federations, the Federation of Drug Manufacturers (BAH) and five drugmakers.
The pharmaceutical companies are Bayer Vital, Boehringer Ingelheim, McNeil Pharma, Novartis Consumer Health and Procter & Gamble. Eight pharmacies in the city of Hildesheim have also been fined 150,000 euros for price-fixing of non-prescription drugs. All the other cases are said to involve illegal drug price agreements involving a number of pharmacies.
The BKA has said that, since early 2004, a free market pricing regime has been applied to non-prescription drugs which are available only in pharmacies - over-the-counter medicines - and each pharmacy can fix its own retail price. This created price competition but a number of drug market participants reached agreements on pricing in order to dampen down this competition.
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