Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen als öffentliche Auftraggeber im Sinne des GWB-Vergaberechts?

As early as in 2009, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) clarified that Germany’s statutory health insurance funds are contracting authorities as defined by European public procurement law (especially the Directive 2004/18/EU, which was meanwhile been repealed and replaced by the Directive 2014/24/EU).
On the other hand, in a later ruling the ECJ did not qualify Germany’s medical associations as contracting authorities. So those institutions do not have to apply the rules of the European public procurement law but only the rules of their respective public budget laws.
Referring to the aforementioned rulings by the ECJ, this work focuses on the “Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen” (Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Doctors) from the perspective of whether they too should be regarded as “contracting authorities”. An examination of their position in the German public health system reveals that the “Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen” have similarities to both the statutory health insurance funds and the medical associations.