Standards and Standard-Setting Organizations Smart cars rely on interconnectivity and interoperability: in order to achieve autonomous driving, driverless vehicles will have to understand and engage with their environment so they can react and adapt accordingly. Connected cars will become one of the applications of the internet of things as vehicles will be constantly exchanging information…

The French Competition Authority (“FCA”) has published the results of its sector-specific inquiry into display online advertising. The 125-page opinion of March 6, 2018, (“Opinion“) identifies potential competition concerns and is likely to trigger individual antitrust investigations by the FCA (and potentially other national competition authorities) in the online advertising sector. Background In May 2016,…

In April 2017, the European Commission (“Commission”) published a tender offer seeking an assessment of the EU market for loan syndication and possible implications under EU competition rules. The successful candidate will draft a report providing an overview of the market and the relevant elements that the Commission may use for assessing the competitive environment…

Legal change sometimes takes unpredictable paths: mid-April, something important happened for European law in Luxembourg, but this did not come from the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”). Not every reader of this blog is necessarily aware that the ECJ has a sister European Court in Luxembourg, which is called the EFTA Court. This Court…

The past decade has seen a flurry of articles published trying to make sense of the degree of control that the EU Courts exercise on complex economic reasoning. By contrast, much less has been written about the Courts’ unlimited jurisdiction on fines, which allows them to increase or decrease the financial sanctions imposed by the…

It is commonly accepted that, pursuant to the principle of intragroup immunity, Article 101 TFEU cannot catch agreements or concerted practices between entities that belong to the same undertaking. Article 101 TFEU requires coordination between at least two undertakings: everything that happens within a single undertaking simply cannot be covered by Article 101 TFEU. Yet,…

It is not uncommon for the law to progress as a consequence of significant discrepancies and disagreements arising between courts and enforcers. This is exactly what may currently be happening to the French rules governing the calculation of fines. One can expect that, once the dust has settled, the calculation methodology applied by the French…

A case involving Google confirms that the French Competition Authority is keen on using a combination of interim measures and commitment proceedings in order help it quickly resolve maters which it perceives as competition issues. This may remain a specific feature of the French system however: having regard to the very demanding standard of proof…