Competition Regulation of Pharma Sector

Galyna P. Zagorodniuk, Dmytro A. Tkachenko

In accordance with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, Ukraine has agreed to harmonize its competition laws and enforcement practices with the relevant EU regulations. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the Committee) have already taken significant steps towards implementing the provisions of the Association Agreement by adopting guidelines on the imposition of penalties for violation of antitrust laws and by increasing merger control thresholds. However, building on these achievements, the Committee still has to bring its enforcement practices into line with the concepts and practices of contemporary EU antitrust rules.

In particular, back in 2011 the Committee began an investigation of the medicines market with a focus on pricing and discount strategies at the wholesale level. While the Committee issued recommendations to some market players, the investigation is on-going and uncertainty as to what types of pricing models and discounts are allowable remains unresolved. Therefore, it may prove useful to look into concepts and policies developed by the European competition authorities within the investigation of European markets of medications...