Stampa

AS381 - RESTRICTIONS ON PHARMACY OPENING HOURS


PRESS RELEASE



PRESS RELEASE


ANTITRUST: LIBERALIZATION OF PHARMACY OPENING HOURS AND TURNS


The goal: to guarantee greater freedom for consumers and fair competition with other distribution channels

Liberalize pharmacies' Regionally stipulated trading hours, turns and vacations so as to ensure greater public access to pharmacies and so as to enable pharmacists to compete on an equal footing with other distribution channels.
That is the request made by the Italian Competition Authority in a submission approved on 1 February and forwarded to the Government, to the Speakers of the House and Senate and to the Regions.
In the Authority's view, the following steps must be taken:
1) do away with the limitation on the maximum number of trading hours each day or each week, extending the option of opening shops for longer than the minimum number of hours foreseen in the regulations;
2) eliminate obligatory closing days on Sundays, public holidays and certain weekdays;
3) eliminate the minimum limit on annual vacation time;
4) eliminate the obligation to keep the same opening hours within the industry.
In its submission, the Authority points out that on multiple occasions it has recommended that the Regions' regulation of pharmacies' activities should place greater emphasis on the promotion of competition.
While the Authority can see a justification for minimum opening hours and turns so as to ensure the public interest in full availability of medicines, the restrictions which prevent pharmacists from offering their services beyond the minimum hours and turns would seem to be an unjustified restraint on competition between pharmacies and an impediment to a wider service that would benefit consumers.
The removal of these restrictions is even more necessary in the light of the Bersani decree which allows non-prescription (SOP) pharmaceuticals to be sold by stores other than pharmacies. Numerous pharmacy owners have in fact felt the need for greater freedom in their commercial practices including questions of opening hours, turns, holidays etc., as is evidenced by the large number of solicitations received by the Authority. The restrictions mentioned are indeed discriminatory, given that they prevent pharmacies from  competing “on a level playing field” with the new operators authorized by the Bersani decree: in the new regulatory context, the maximum limits on pharmacies' opening hours may even put at risk the viability of those pharmacies which are most directly exposed to the growing competition and, consequently, the overall coverage of the pharmacy network may be called into question.
The Authority further points out the problematic features of Regional  rules which recognize a role for the pharmacists' representative bodies in defining the maximum limits on opening hours and any relevant override provisions. If the decisions are made by the pharmacists' representatives themselves, there is a risk that members' activities will tend toward uniformity and their individual entrepreneurial initiative will be blunted.



Rome, 2 February 2007