EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

care through its network of health service providers with whom it has concluded direct individual contracts for the provision and payment of reimbursed services; said company must have a contract with at least 10% of health service providers providing outpatient care and with at least 60% providers providing acute inpatient care, registered in the appropriate register (Article 180j (9)). 3) The remuneration for insurance mediation may not exceed 10% of the annual premium in one year of insurance (Article 180j (10)). 4) Travel medical insurance is to be provided exclusively by PVZP for a transitional period of 5 years after the Act comes into force (Article 180j (13)). Thus, there is a tightening of requirements for commercial insurance companies on the one hand, and on the other, only one company is granted the right to provide insurance services for foreigners to As is known, specific features of the health insurance sector need to be taken into consideration when applying the antitrust law. Commercial health insurance plays a substitutive role in Czechia, so, as an exception, governments may impose rules restricting free competition. States are not subject to competition law in the exercising of their powers if they do not pursue the goal of making a profit and are simply fulfilling their duty to their citizens (social security, non-profit, national solidarity). It should be ‘considered that the solidarity exception from antitrust law and Art. 106(2) TFEU are complementary for the healthcare sector it will always first need to be analysed whether the entities in question constitute undertakings (and thus whether the solidarity exception applied), after which (in case the undertaking infringed the competition rules) it can be analysed under article 106(2) whether the restriction of competition can be justified’ (Makkink, 2017, p. 59). Considering the ability to apply solidarity exception we claim that we cannot do this in our case. According to law-case for the exception to apply, it must be taken into (1) the social objective of the activity performed by the entity; (2) the existence of State control over the activities of the entity; and (3) the solidarity principle, which is essentially a principle of redistribution (Makkink, 2017, p. 23). PVZP is a commercial private company that is not based on the principle of universal protection of the consumer, it is not under enough state control (the State has no power to influence nor approve the amount of the contributions made by clients), they show no evidence of operating under pure solidarity aspect or redistributive policy. We are discussing a very profitable business in Czechia that was approved in many Czech investigations earlier (Dobiášová, 2016, p. 79, 114; Pojmanová, 2017, p. 12, 55). So, it is clear that PVZP’s activity has never been nor is it in the sphere of social security. obtain long-term residence. 3.3 The legal analysis

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