Commission opens rare abuse of dominance case into excessive pricing by Aspen Pharma

Commission opens rare abuse of dominance case into excessive pricing by Aspen Pharma

The European Commission has opened an investigation into whether Aspen Pharma is charging excessive prices for certain cancer medicines in breach of Article 102 TFEU.

The Commission suspects that Aspen has imposed “very significant” and “unjustified” price increases of up to several hundred per cent for medicines that it acquired after the expiry of patent protection.

The Commission’s investigation will cover the whole of the EEA except Italy.  In 2016 the Italian competition regulator fined Aspen EUR 5.2 million for infringing Article 102 TFEU as a result of unfair pricing and found price increases of up to 1500 per cent for some cancer medicines.

This is the first competition investigation by the Commission into excess pricing in the pharmaceutical sector.  Excessive pricing cases are rare in EU law and the competition authorities cite the mantra that they do not want to act as price regulators.  It may be that by opening this case, the Commission is seeking to achieve a uniform approach at national and EU level to what can be a knotty legal and economic question: the circumstances in which prices may be deemed excessive.

Commission press release. IP/17/1323.