Re‐establishing needed limits: European competition policy's role in European healthcare systems and the lessons of the Dôvera case

Abstract

European competition policy's first interactions with national healthcare systems emerged after 2000 without much controversy as only those healthcare regimes with clear marketorientated elements were subject to EU competition rules.After 2010 however, this began to be challenged as a result of pressures from the private sector, various marketization reforms in Europe as well as pressures from within the EU itself. The question therefore re-emerged: would EU competition law, and its 'state aid law' part especially, now be pushed into social solidarity-orientated healthcare, including those that were subject to some degree of marketisation? This article examines this question through two important recent competition law cases from Belgium and Slovakia, but with a focus on the latter. Despite the apparent limits placed on European competition law's place in healthcare in the 2000s, European Commission and the Court of Justice were called upon to reassert some limits on its role in healthcare and social solidarity-based regimes in particular. Together, the Iris-H and Dôvera cases resolve those political and institutional problems that such a competition policy-based intrusion into healthcare would have created.