The Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) published yesterday an informal opinion dated 3 February 2025 addressed to the Veterinarians’ association (Orde der Dierenartsen/Ordre des Médecins Vétérinaires – OMV) in which it finds fee regulations proposed by OMV to be incompatible with competition law (the Opinion; see, attached copy).

Referring to the German “Gebührenordnung fur Tierärtzinnen und Tierärtze” (GOT), which regulates fees for veterinarians in Germany, OMV had requested the BCA to advise on whether competition law would allow it to (i) establish a fee list for veterinary services; and (ii) issue a general opinion on veterinary fees (the Proposed Fee Regulation or PFR). The PFR would be based on Article 19 of OMV’s Code of Ethics which provides that “[t]he remuneration of veterinarians must not depend on criteria that would compromise their independence or the quality of their veterinary practice” (free translation from the French).

In the Opinion, the BCA notes that:

• GOT is irrelevant to assess the PFR from the perspective of competition law as GOT was adopted by the German State and, subject to limited exceptions, thus escapes the application of competition law;
• the PFR would qualify as a decision by an association of undertakings and is, therefore, subject to competition law. In this regard, the BCA refers to its decision of 21 August 2007 in Case MEDE-I/O-00/0027 (Orde der Dierenartsen) in which it had already qualified OMV as an association of undertakings and ruled that OMV had infringed competition law by fixing minimum fees;
• the PFR would restrict competition “by object” within the meaning of Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and Article IV.1, §1 of the Code of Economic Law (CEL) in that it would amount to horizontal price fixing for veterinary services (this means that the very nature of the PFR is regarded as anticompetitive and the BCA has no duty to investigate the actual effects of the PFR on the market before reaching an adverse finding); and
• it is very unlikely that the PFR can be exempted on the basis of Article 101(3) TFEU and Article IV.1, §3 CEL. In particular, the PFR cannot be regarded as necessary to guarantee the independence of veterinarians and the quality of their services (which Article 19 of OMV’s Code of Ethics claims to protect). Moreover, it follows from the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union that restrictions of competition by object cannot be exempted for reasons of professional ethics.

Interestingly, the signatory of the Opinion is the BCA’s President Axel Desmedt, and not Competition Prosecutor General Damien Gerard. This probably implies that the Opinion was adopted pursuant to Article IV.19, §1, 5° CEL, which grants the BCA’s President the power to “issue informal opinions on the application of the rules on infringements of competition law to a proposed practice, insofar as the same, similar or related question is not the subject of proceedings before the European Commission, the Competition Prosecutor General’s Office or the Competition College, or of proceedings before a national court or a court of the European Union”.