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”…
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…
The CNMC, the Spanish Competition Authority, has initiated proceedings against Pfizer for a potential anticompetitive conduct derived from the supply contracts. The referred company signed the contracts with several wholesale distributors. Such supply contracts are deemed to impede effective parallel commerce within the European Union. In 2005, Spain Pharma filed a claim against Pfizer and…
The fifth edition of the Trento Antitrust Conference will be held in Trento on 16-18 April 2015. The Conference is organized by the Trento Faculty of Law and the Osservatorio Permanente sull’Applicazione delle Regole di Concorrenza (“Antitrust Observatory”), founded and co-directed by Michele Carpagnano and Gian Antonio Benacchio. The event is supported by the Italian…
On 12 February 2015, Advocate General Wahl delivered his opinion to the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”) in Case C-583/13 Deutsche Bahn AG v European Commission. The appeal concerns Deutsche Bahn’s actions for annulment of three 2011 Commission decisions authorizing unannounced Article 102 inspections at Deutsche Bahn AG’s (and some of its subsidiaries’) premises.…
The General Court stated, with decision of 21 January 2015 in the case Easyjet (T-355/13), that the Commission may reject a complaint on the basis that a national competition authority has already dealt with it. In 2008, EasyJet lodged complaints with the Netherlands competition authority against Schiphol (Luchthaven Schiphol NV) airport’s pricing policies. After the…
On 12 December 2014, the General Court of the European Union rejected (partially in one case) the appeals brought by Hansen & Rosenthal, Tudapetrol, ChemPharm, ENI and Repsol against the Commission decision of 1 October 2008. The Commission fined, on that occasion, nine wax producers for price fixing and market sharing and imposed a total…
The Court of Justice has set aside the General Court’s ruling in the Guardian case, providing a different approach to the calculation of the fine. The fine for a competition law infringement is generally calculated as a percentage of the undertaking’s annual sales of the product concerned by the infringement. The relevant sales are usually…
The Competition and Markets Authority, following its provisional decision of 18 July 2014, has launched a market investigation into the personal current account and SME retail banking sectors. The investigation is aimed at finding out if low levels of customers shopping around and switching, limited transparency of the market, barriers to entry, stability of market…