Trade Policies in Medical Goods and Services
a block exemption from the application of its competition law in the health care sector to enable firms to cooperate to prevent shortages during the pandemic (Naidu and Nxumalo 2020). Competition authorities also stayed on the alert for other anticompetitive practices. For example, in Greece, the Hellenic Competition Commission initiated an ex officio investigation for suspected violations of the competition law in public procurement tenders of medical and other goods and services needed to respond to the p andemic (Greece, HCC 2020). Competition authorities paid attention to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on merger control assessment. For example, on substance, several competition authorities issued guidance and clarified that the emergency would not affect their standards for merger review (for example, in the United Kingdom).48 In terms of working arrangements, several competition authorities indicated that they would show some flexibility, such as by extending the periods for review and advising to notify only for “urgent and essential” deals (Latham & Watkins 2021).
NOTES 1. Tariff data are from World Tariff Profiles (2021 and earlier issues), a joint annual publication of the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Trade Centre (ITC), and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). For issues available to download, see the WTO’s World Tariff Profiles web page: https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/tariff _profiles_e.htm. 2. Data on quantitative restrictions are based on notifications submitted by WTO members. See the WTO Quantitative Restrictions Database: https://qr.wto.org/en#/home. 3. The air transport services sector is governed by a maze of bilateral, and a few plurilateral, air services agreements (ASAs), which provide for the reciprocal exchange of traffic rights. Most of these agreements are highly restrictive, dictating the prices charged, number of flights offered, types of aircrafts deployed, and cities served, and prohibiting any kind of third-party competition. 4. F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. & Anr. v. Cipla Ltd. [RFA(OS) 92/2012]; and Cipla Ltd. v. F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. & Anr. [RFA(OS) 103/2012], paras. 71–74. 5. For information on the research and regulatory review exceptions, see the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Database on Flexibilities in the Intellectual Property System: https://www.wipo.int/ip-development/en/agenda/flexibilities/database.html. 6. For example, some studies have shown that the effect of data exclusivity, as implemented pursuant to regional trade agreements, is to delay the entry of generic pharmaceuticals onto the market (Shaffer and Brenner 2009). 7. See also “Social Responsibility at the University of Manchester” (web page), University of Manchester website: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/social-responsibility/. 8. See also the WTO Trade Monitoring Database (reporting period of October 16, 2020, to October 15, 2021): https://tmdb.wto.org/en. 9. The medical service delivery modes discussed in this section refer to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) modes: (1) cross-border supply, (2) consumption abroad, (3) commercial presence, and (4) presence of natural persons. 10. The data on restrictions to medical services trade are from the World Bank and WTO Survey on Impediments to Services Integration (Borchert et al. 2019). At the time of writing, the data covered 9 high-income economies, 44 middle-income economies, and 20 low-income economies.
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