The Commission announced on 16 July the launch of two investigations against Qualcomm, with a view to determine whether the company has engaged in practices abusing its market position under Article 102 TFEU. The proceedings concern the field of baseband chipsets that are the crucial components of consumer electronic devices, such as smartphones or tablets.…
The judgment rendered by the Court of Justice on 9 July 2015 dismisses in its entirety the appeal by InnoLux seeking a reduction in the amount of the fine imposed for its involvement in the cartel concerning LCD panels. In December 2010, the Commission adopted the decision ascertaining that six major international manufacturers of LCD…
On 9 July 2015, following formal proceedings launched in April 2013, the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections against MasterCard in which it formulated competition concerns in relation to the costs of card payments in the EU. Under discussion are interchange fees paid by the retailer’s bank (the ‘acquiring bank’) to the bank of…
The burden of proof falling on the claimant in competition damages actions, especially if stand-alone type, is notoriously fraught with difficulty. As a consequence, if the national judge interprets the domestic procedural laws in a strict and formalistic manner, this may render the burden not just difficult but nearly close to impossible. The Italian Court…
The European Commission has fined ten undertakings participating in five different cartels in the market of retail packaging trays. Eight manufacturers (Huhtamäki of Finland, Nespak and Vitembal of France, Silver Plastics of Germany, Coopbox, Magic Pack and Sirap-Gema of Italy and Linpac of the UK) and two distributors (Ovarpack of Portugal and Propack of the…
With a recent judgment in the case T-623/13, the General Court ratified the presumption used by the European Commission for which documents exchanged between the Commission and a national competition authority in proceedings concerning an infringement of the competition rules may harm the commercial interest of the undertakings involved and therefore are not, in principle,…
The Italian, French and Swedish Antitrust Authorities, in coordination with the European Commission, have accepted the commitments submitted by Booking.com. The three national watchdogs launched domestic investigations on the online travel agent in 2014, to which followed a market test of the European Commission. The main concern of these investigations were the so-called “parity clauses”…
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Vivil, a German producer of cough drops and vitamin sweets, sued Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar refiner, for compensation of damages caused by the German ‘sugar cartel’. The defendant participated, together with Nordzucker and Pfeifer, to anticompetitive agreements on sales areas, quotas and prices. The infringements involved the sale of sugar for the processing industry (so-called industrial…
In 2009, the CNMC sanctioned Repsol, Cepsa and BP for indirectly fixing the retail price charged to independent petrol stations that operated under their flag. In doing so, they restricted competition between the petrol stations of their network and all the other petrol stations. This decision aimed at avoiding price fixing of the fuel in…