Competition law mainly deals with microeconomic issues. Price theory orients its application, with price, supply, demand, and information being important parameters. However, microeconomics does not have a monopoly on influencing competition and competition law. Macroeconomic developments have roles to play as well. These roles may materialize in the form of monetary and budgetary policies. For…
On 12 January 2023, the new EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) entered into force. The majority of the FSR will start to apply on 12 July 2023. The FSR constitutes a new investigatory review tool for the European Commission. It will focus on economic behaviour on the internal market by companies who received foreign subsidies…
With its judgment of 8.11.2022, the ECJ’s Grand Chamber put an end to the Commission’s recent case practice on transfer pricing rulings. In 32 paragraphs (paras 81-112), it seems to have demolished an 8-year laborious effort of the Commission’s DG COMP and Legal Service to employ State aid rules against the advance transfer pricing agreements…
On March 4, 2021, the Court of Justice (‘CJEU’) delivered a judgment in the State aid case Fútbol Club Barcelona (C-362/19 P), quashing the ruling of the General Court of February 26, 2019 (T-865/16) and upholding the Commission’s Decision of July 3, 2016 (SA.29769). In its judgment, the CJEU provided helpful guidance to assess the…
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the already struggling Indian economy and the sky-high growth in the cartel cases in the country comes as no surprise. However, given the current economic fallout, the Competition Commission of India (‘CCI’) has lately shown leniency to the companies involved in the cartel cases. The Indian fair-trade…
The General Court of the European Union has issued two awaited rulings in the Starbucks[1] and Fiat[2] cases. The length and the depth of the analysis made by the judges of the General Court should be acknowledged, even if certain key issues are perhaps too rapidly dealt with. Although the Commission lost in Starbucks, the…
Lawyers across Europe holding their breath while awaiting the General Court’s ruling on the Belgian Excess Profits case were doubtlessly disappointed. On Valentine’s Day, the General Court reminded the European Commission that “tough love” is always a possibility, but the Commission’s defeat is no mortal blow. Its decision was annulled on more or less “technical” grounds,…
On September 4, 2018 the European Commission published the non-confidential version of its decision in the Engie case (SA.44888), where it concluded that Luxembourg had granted illegal State aid through two tax rulings.[1] The decision has been appealed by Luxembourg.[2] The decision brings interesting additions and precisions to the arguments developed in the earlier cases…
