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• France: The Autorité de la concurrence launches Sector Inquiries into Distribuon of Medicinal Products and Interregional Coach Transport In February 2013, the Autorité de la concurrence (the Autorité) launched two ex officio sector inquiries into, the distribuon of medicinal products and interregional coach transport services, respecvely. The first sector inquiry looks at the distribuon of medicinal products at the upstream (laboratories), intermediate (wholesaler distributors) and downstream (pharmacies) levels. Its scope is disnct from the European Commission’s 2009 sector inquiry into the pharmaceucal sector which dealt with the reasons for delays in the entry of generic medicines to the market and the apparent decline in innovaon as measured by the number of new medicines coming to the market. In this inquiry, the Autorité intends to examine compeve factors at play throughout the distribuon chain: • At the upstream level, the Autorité will look at the pharmaceucal laboratories’ pricing policy for all types of medicinal products, i.e., whether their price is regulated (prescripon drugs) or not (non prescripon). Guidance towards laboratories to allow for the self-monitoring of their behaviour in the context of generic entry will also be considered. • At the intermediate level, the Autorité will look at the wholesale distributors’ role in the distribuon cycle, the difficules they face in reconciling public service obligaons on the one hand and compeon from laboratories developing direct sales to pharmacies on the other. Moreover, the compeve pressure they exert as importers and/or exporters will be carefully assessed. • At the retail level, the Autorité will look at the pharmacies’ role in promong generics, the compeve dynamics with regard to the sale of non price-regulated products and the impact of online sales; the laer issue was touched on by the Autorité in an opinion of December 2012 (see Opinion 12-A-23 in French only), emphasizing concerns about the proposed transposion in France of Direcve 2011/62/ EU on the grounds that it unduly restricts the scope inially foreseen for online sale of medicinal products. The second sector inquiry covers the interregional coach transport sector, a sector where condions for entry were recently eased and which is currently undergoing expansion. The inquiry will address in parcular the issue of the remaining hurdles under the authorizaon scheme which is sll in place, as well as the compeve advantages of mulmodal transport companies, including the case of the incumbent rail operator which holds a de facto monopoly on rail transport, operates under local delegaons numerous urban transport routes, manages train staons and parking lots and has recently entered the interregional coach transport sector through its iDBus service which competes with leading company Eurolines. The Autorité will organize public consultaons for both inquiries, in the summer (medicinal products) and in autumn (interregional coach). See press release on the distribuon of medicinal products (in English and French) and press release on coach transport (in English and French) 33
