» Regulation of network industries

» Public competition law

» Regulation of the health markets

Regulation of network industries

The dynamic development of the legal framework regarding the liberalized sectors of telecommunications, energy and railway lead to many interesting regulatory problems.

Major changes are imminent in the telecommunications- and energy sector due to new legislative developments in the EC community law. The European Commission introduced its propositions for a reform of the appropriate directives and regulations and the founding of a European regulatory agency in September and November 2007. The Commission also currently discusses ideas and possibilities regarding a further liberalization of the railway sector on a European level, as well as national initiatives to further this goal.

This area of expertise mainly focuses on sector-specific and sector-transcending legal analysis and advice regarding the development of both, the community law in an institutional and substantive way, and the national regulatory framework.

Public competition law

It has become increasingly important to deal with problems in the field of public competition law with an approach including EC law, especially EC state aid-law. Appropriate case-law and decisions by the European Commission need to be analyzed and interpreted regularly to keep track of this constantly evolving field. Last year the European Commission introduced an extensive set of new rules, which primarily codified economic tools regularly used to deal with state aid cases.

The goal of these measures is to clarify the legal framework regarding state-aids on the European level by the end of 2009. This ensures legal certainty by enhancing the predictability of decisions by the European Commission and the courts, and hopefully simplifies the respective administrative processes, allowing the member states to pursue the aims set in the strategy of Lisbon.

Another interesting topic in this regard is the analysis of the reform treaty, which promises to impose many changes on the EC competition law.

Regulation of the health markets

Focal point of the field “Regulation of the German health market/ European pharmaceutical law” is monitoring the status of the proceedings in the Parliament regarding the German health reform (approximately: “ law to strengthen competition in the compulsory health insurance market”) and identifying the consequences of these proceedings for the organizational structure of the insurance providers and the care providers.

Of a special interest are the consequences for drugstores and the laws regulating the distribution of medical supplies. The effects of the “GKV-Modernisierungsgesetz”, which first opened the public health sector for competition on January 1, 2004 have been expanded and supplemented by the law passed on April 1, 2007.

The assessment of the effects these novelties will have for care providers from other member states will be of paramount importance for the research in the near future.