The Competition Tribunal condemns Pharmacies the the fine of seven million – Public.en

The Court of Competition, Regulation and Supervision has confirmed the decision of the Competition Authority (AdC) that, in December, he condemned the National Association of Pharmacies (ANF) to the payment of a total fine of 10,34 million euros for abuse of dominant position in the sector of the market studies and business data of the pharmacies.

THE TNA appealed to the court of first instance and, in the judgment, which was read this morning, in Santarém, the judge has confirmed the understanding of the AdC, while reducing the amount of the fine to approximately seven million euros.

In PUBLIC statements on the occasion of the decision of the AdC, the official source TNA had guaranteed that the institution would appeal against a decision that it understood lack of "legal support".

in This Thursday, after you have known the judgment of the Competition court, the ANF has confirmed that it will challenge again the decision of the AdC. “The ANF has said it will appeal, because they acted always within the law and in the benefit of free competition”, revealed the association presided over by Paulo Duarte, in a statement.

in This process, in addition to the ANF have been convicted of other companies of the group: the Farminveste SGPS, Farminveste – Investments, Investments and Management, and the consultant at HMR – Health Market Research.

In question is the group action, ANF the sector studies for pharmaceutical laboratories, which is worth about 20 million euros per year. The consultants that do these studies refer to the Farminveste (TNA), which is the only supplier in the Uk of commercial data from a representative sample of pharmacies.

The decision of conviction of the AdC was based on the abuse of a dominant position Farminveste from 2009, when he created his own production company studies (the HMR). Second, the regulator led by António Ferreira Gomes, the company escalated the sale prices of commercial data of pharmacies and has made more than duplicassem between 2010 and 2013, to values close to 250 euros per month, per pharmacy.

This evolution of prices has prevented the competitors to get the margin needed to cover the production costs of their studies, when compared with the selling prices of studies of the HMR, held the AdC in the decision of December last year.

Already the TNA has a vision completely opposite. Noting that the “multinational american company IMS” (one of the entities whose complaint triggered the investigation of AdC) was “a monopolist, and wanted to have access to the data of the pharmacies on the consumption of medicines in conditions different from those that had agreed to”, the ANF has highlighted the contribution of the HMR in the increase of competition in the market.

“The Portuguese market and the free competition benefited with the entry into activity of the HMR, a Portuguese company exporter, with consolidated activity in Spain and in Ireland,” said the association.