The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation to assess whether US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson and Swiss firm Novartis worked together to block the entry of generic painkiller Fentanyl onto the Dutch market.

The Commission said in a statement it pays particularly close attention to business practices in the pharmaceutical sector after an earlier inquiry showed drugs firms may be paying to delay the entry on to the market of generic medicines. Generic medicines are cheaper than the branded versions.
‘Pharmaceutical companies are already rewarded for their innovation efforts by the patents they are granted. Paying a competitor to stay out of the market is a restriction of competition that the Commission will not tolerate,’ said Joaquín Almunia, deputy competition commissioner.
A spokesman for Swiss-based Novartis, whose Sandoz division is a major player in the global generics market, told Reuters news agency it did not comment on ongoing investigations.