The Certain Aspects of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) in Pharmaceutical Industries Relating the Antitrust and IPR Rules of the EU acquis communautaire

Mirna Pavletic-Zupic, Member, Croatian Competition Council, Croatian Competition Agency, Croatia

The prescription of the Article 152 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (furthermore: TFEU), provides special provisions that establish the importance of the public health. The Pharmaceutical Industry entails to the great extent new values of innovation, which shall be specially taken care of and which fall under the protection under the respective intellectual property rights’ rules (IPR). IPR is designed in order to promote innovation, research and development activities (R&D), and mutual cooperation among the entrepreneurs on the market. Mergers and Acqusitions (M&A) in Pharmaceutical Sector within the Internal Market of the EU, are complex, because of the specific rules of the protection of the intellectual property rights (IPR), and correlation to the competition rules of the EU acquis, especially the Articles 101 and 102 of the TFEU, but also considering the fact that the importance of the respective EU acquis rules which regulate the protection of the public health shall be also kept in mind.

The Croatian Competition Agency (CCA) performs administrative and professional activities relating to competition, in the area of anti-trust as well as state aid . The competences of the CCA are regulated by the Competition Act (Official Gazette, No 122/2003) and the State Aid Act (Official Gazette, No 47/03 and 60/04).