Parallel Trade in the European Union: Competition Law Aspects

This thesis is devoted to competition law aspects of parallel trade regulation in the European Union. The long line of case law of the European Court of Justice and the European Commission reflects the changes of the approaches towards the problem of parallel trade restrictions, where the very first cases establish the fundamental framework and policies for development of the internal market through the free movement of goods, and the most recent jurisprudence aims to review those approaches in the light of the rule of reason and efficiency gains policy with the focus on welfare of final consumers. This paper conducts a comprehensive analysis of the long-term development of parallel trade in the European Union. In that regard, special attention is paid to the fundamental approaches to the freedom of parallel trade elaborated in Consten and Grundig case and their further development into the “restrictions by object” policy. The last is subject to critical assessment in context with its application in pharmaceutical sector. The recent judgements of the ECJ in the GSK Greece and GSK Spain cases open a new page in the history of parallel trade in Europe, and their evaluation is therefore of very big importance for this research. Another point of interest concerns the comparison of the European experience on parallel trade regulation with the respective approaches elaborated in the newly established Common Economic Space (CES), the free-trade area of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan