EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

are legally limited, proposed changes would also require some form of guarantee, presumably in the form of a state guarantee. … a system based on the provision of a product by a single provider is vulnerable and its dependence on that provider may pose a threat to continuity” (Česká Narodní Banka [online], 2021). The state did not provide these guarantees and we can hereby draw an obvious conclusion that instead of guaranteed medical care, we must assume that in fact, more vulnerabilities have appeared in this restructuring, in the form of insufficient financial solvency without such a state guarantee. Inaddition,Czechiaobserves the existenceof financial debts tomedical institutions from commercial insurance companies was a reason for granting a monopoly to PVZP. We can use this statement as a proportionality test. As for the debts of commercial insurance companies to medical service providers, this aspect is difficult to assess without official economic indicators. The available data to the end of 2017 shows that outstanding payments owed to medical institutions for foreigners from non-EU nations remained at just 1.7% of the total cost of health care for all foreigners in hospitals, with patients from EU countries at 1.2% (ČSÚ (2018), p. 184). No statistics have been presented to explain this amendment. At the same time, there were statements from authorized representatives that the problem for the Czech medical system is not insured foreigners, but foreigners without an insurance policy at all (ČAP [online], 2021), and in the long term, their level of debt is stable and there is no indication of a critical situation that would need to be radically addressed (Přikryl [online], 2021). In other words; allowing competition in the commercial insurance services for migrants would not lead to competitors carrying out this activity profitably, at the expense of the medical services provider, who would have to provide unprofitable and unpaid medical services. So, in this aspect, we cannot determine that SGEI gains any significant advantages from the monopoly of PVZP. In my opinion, it should be considered doubtful to apply justification under Art. 106(2) in our case, although the final decision is the Commission’s issue. Thus, there is a violation of Art. 106(1), 102(a) TFEU and Art. 4(3) TEU, because the bodies of State must also respect the requirements of public law protection of competition, otherwise such acts are part of the procedure of state that is contrary to its loyalty obligation under EU law under Article 4 (3) of the TEU (Šmejkal, 2017, p. 93). Moreover, before the adoption of this amendment to the legislation, Czech experts had noticed that this new law presented a conflict with EU law (Brabec [online], 2021). 1) It violates Art. 188 of Directive 2009/138/EC (the Member States shall ensure that monopolies in respect of the taking-up of the business of certain classes of insurance, granted to bodies established within their territories and referred to in Art. 8, are abolished). 2) It is disrupting the EU single market

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