Potentially infectious medical waste in the French overseas territories: the General Rapporteur announces that an objection concerning an anticompetitive agreement has been[...]

The companies concerned are accused of having concluded and implemented an agreement that led to the creation of a monopoly and the elimination of all competition in the potentially infectious medical waste* treatment market in one of the French overseas territories.

The agreement is also likely to have had effects on the related market for the collection and transport of potentially infectious medical waste, in which the new entity also operates.

This investigative act opens inter partes proceedings and enables the parties to exercise their rights of defence. It does not prejudge the guilt of the companies that have received the statement of objections. Only an inter partes investigation, respecting the rights of defence of the parties concerned, will enable the Board to determine, after exchanging written observations and following an oral hearing, whether the objection is well-founded.

The Autorité de la concurrence will not comment further, either on the companies or on the practices in question.

* In accordance with Article R. 1335-1 of the French Public Health Code (Code de la santé publique), medical waste is "waste produced from diagnosis, follow-up and preventive, curative or palliative treatment, in human and veterinary medicine".