EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

or a substitutive role (mainly where it is impossible to be included in public health insurance, or in some cases as a right for certain groups of people). Although in the WHO report (WHO, 2016, p.42) commercial health insurance is called ‘voluntary’, for many foreigners in the Czech Republic, private health insurance (“travel medical insurance”) is, in fact, a mandatory requirement to be able to stay in the country. This applies to all non-EU citizens as well as those from countries with which Czechia has not concluded international agreements on mutual medical and social security, who stay in the territory more than 90 days, but less than 5 years (the required period to obtain permanent residence) and who are self-employed, studying or not employed (based on family reunification). In previous years (2004–2021) in the Czech Republic, all those with this migrant status were able to purchase commercial travel medical insurance from any one of 6 different insurance companies (AXA Assistance, ERGO, Maxima, PVZP, Slavia, UNIQA). However, for a period of five years from August 2 nd , 2021, to August 2 nd , 2026, commercial travel medical insurance in the scope of comprehensive healthcare as required by the Act on the Residence of Foreign Nationals may be concluded exclusively with PVZP (Act No. 326/1999) which is a subsidiary of state public insurance company VZP. As a reaction to such a change in legislation, on 29 th November a complaint from the Czech Insurance Association was submitted to the European Commission stating that this excludes competition from the market (ČAP [online], 2021). 2. Problem Formulation and Methodology We consider that granting monopoly power to the PVZP company for providing commercial insurance services for the next 5 years does not comply with EU law, according to several signs, among which the most important we highlight as follows: 1) “state aid” prohibited by antimonopoly legislation; 2) granting exclusive rights for PVZP with direct exclusion of other entities from the provision of the relevant services. So, the aim of this study is to determine whether there is objective and reasonable justification for granting a monopoly to PVZP and the apparent violation of EU antitrust legislation, in the light of alternative ways to solve existing medical insurance problems to these migrants; as well as to reveal the possible social consequences of such a violation. Our work is based on a comparative analysis of EU antitrust provisions and law with adopted changes in the aforementioned Czech legislation. We highlight the stated reasons for making changes and the concrete steps that have been taken or omitted to achieve their goals. Furthermore, we apply the contextual and discursive analysis method to put forward a thesis about the actual causes of the changes made. To be unilateral and provide a more objective study and for

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