On 21 June 2023, the Bundeskartellamt, the Federal Cartel Office (FCO), sent a statement of objections to Google and published its preliminary legal assessment of Google’s practices in connection with Google Automotive Services (GAS). According to the Authority’s preliminary evaluation, Google’s practices regarding the licencing of services for infotainment systems in vehicles fulfil the requirements…

With a much-unanticipated outcome, on 26 July 2023, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (UKSC) finally handed down its long-expected judgement in R (on the application of PACCAR Inc and others) v Competition Appeal Tribunal and others [2023] UKSC 28, a decision that is considered to have a significant hit on the litigation funding…

On the 31st of July, the European Commission issued for public consultation its (fourth) Template relating to the audited description of consumer profiling techniques pursuant to Article 15 of the DMA (the Template). The Template is inserted within the Commission’s wider transparency strategy to provide for a stream of implementing acts to secure the DMA’s…

My previous comment on Case-50/21 Prestige and Limousine SL v Área Metropolitana de Barcelona et al (see here) started with the following question: “Are the Supposed Regulatory Privileges of the Taxi Sector Coming to an End? The Opinion of AG Szpunar in Case C‑50/21”. The conclusions in the ECJ judgment of June 8, 2023 (Judgment)…

On 24 July 2023, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) issued a very relevant award in case CAS 2023/O/9370 Professional Football Agents Association (PROFAA) v. FIFA (the Award), in which it examined various claims of illegality of the new FIFA Football Agents Regulations (FFAR) under several areas of law, most importantly those under EU…

The Kluwer Competition Law Blog will remain open but will slow down a bit in the coming weeks. We hope you are having a wonderful summer! If you don’t want to miss out on reading about competition law developments in the meantime, we recommend catching up on our series on the main 2022 developments in…

Introduction On 28 June 2023, the European Commission announced the long-awaited Single Currency Package which consists of two Regulation proposals. The first proposed Legal Tender Cash Regulation (Regulation on the legal tender of euro banknotes and coins) aims to preserve the effectiveness of the legal tender status of euro-denominated cash. The second proposed Digital Euro…

The EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation took effect on 12 July 2023 to much fanfare. We take a look at the top five things PE funds need to know when considering acquisitions with a European footprint. The Foreign Subsidies Regulation (“FSR”) is the European Commission’s attempt to level the playing field for M&A deals by creating…

Loosely based on the lyrics of the band Wu-Tang Clan, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) took a closer look at the acquisition of a Hungarian gravel pit in its judgment of 13 July 2023, C- 106/22, and found some rather big “stones” to turn around with regard to FDI in Europe….

European Union and United States legislators are increasingly concerned about the potentially distortive effects “foreign” subsidies may have on M&A transactions. EU and US authorities are both poised to require transaction parties to provide extensive information to allow authorities to evaluate subsidies granted by other jurisdictions. How do these initiatives compare, and how will the…