In its BUPA Case of February 2008 the Court of First Instance set a new standard for assessing whether public service compensation constitutes a state aid and/or is covered by the exception for services of general economic interest. At issue was risk equalisation between providers of private...

Where the provision of healthcare services involves undertakings (entities engaged in the provision of goods and/or services on a market) these are subject to the EU state aid rules. State aid questions are raised in particular regarding the compensation for public service provision, which may...

The Netherlands is an early mover in healthcare liberalisation. It has a dual policy towards competition enforcement in the sector: not only the general competition rules (the prohibitions on cartels and the abuse of dominance, and merger control) but also rules of sector specific competition...

This paper aims to identify selection separately from moral hazard in a mandatory health insurance market where enrollees can freely choose their deductible scheme. The empirical analysis uses a unique data set for the period 2010-2013 covering the whole population of the Netherlands at enrollee...

Whereas the EU's internal market rules govern market access and public intervention, its competition rules are concerned with the market conduct of private parties. When do the competition rules apply to healthcare? In principle the scope for application of the competition rules to the...

In the EU harmonisation of healthcare has long been elusive. Article 168 paragraph 7 TFEU even forms a sector-specific subsidiarity clause. Meanwhile the ECJ handed down a series of judgments concerning patients' rights to reimbursement for healthcare consumed in other Member States. An initial...

This paper aims, first, to chart the establishment case law of the European court and its impact on the “supply side” of healthcare provision. This shows that the development of this line of case law is slow and piecemeal: although on the one hand non-discriminatory rules are now caught by...

Economic regulation by independent regulatory authorities is justified in a legal sense by theories based on delegation, (partial) ministerial responsibility and judicial review, or more recently on regulatory contracts and stakeholder representation. While none of these models is fully...

Water is an exhaustible natural resource. Access to clean, safe and affordable water must be managed nowadays not only to avoid any unnecessary use of water, but also allow for continuous supply of such an important factor of public well-being. In recent years, water-related activities acquired...

The electricity sector is in a transition towards a Smart Energy System where the roles of private and institutional actors are evolving. This work deals with the influence of some technological innovations on the regulation of the energy sector. It identifies the main radical innovations in the...