The Dutch competition authority ACM fined Samsung Electronics Benelux B.V. (“Samsung”) € 39,875,500 for coordinating the retail prices of Samsung television sets together with various retailers. The alleged coordination took place for five years, from January 2013 through December 2018. The ACM only published a summary of the decision dated 14 September 2021 thus far, but…
In January 2021, the latest reform of the German competition law (“ARC”) entered into force, including significant new rules regarding digital platform markets. These include new powers for the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) under Section 19a ARC regarding digital gatekeepers with paramount cross-market significance for competition (for more details on the new norm, see here). A…
On 10 September 2021, certain significant changes to Austria’s competition law entered into force, although some of the merger control related changes will apply only as of 1 January 2022: Merger control. The amendments include a revision of Austria’s revenue-based merger control threshold, the introduction of the significant lessening of competition test, and a broadening…
The newest episode of the competition edition of the International Law Talk Podcast focuses on the revival of the Dutch clause and other current issues of merger control. For this highly topical issue, I interviewed merger control star Tilman Kuhn from White & Case. Earlier this year, the European Commission encouraged Member States to use…
This autumn, European competition authorities are likely to resume dawn raids of companies suspected of competition law infringements. This will aim to clear a backlog of planned inspections that has built up since the start of the pandemic resulting from organizational difficulties due to COVID-19 travel and social distancing restrictions. Companies should ensure that their…
In his Opinions of 2 September 2021, in Cases C-151/20 Nordzucker and C-117/20 Bpost, Advocate General (AG) Bobek recommended that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) set out coherent guidance for national courts on the application of the ne bis in idem principle, upholding the unified test which should rely on three…
Last week, the German Federal Court of Justice published its April 2021 judgment in Trucks II. The German Court – always good for a surprise – was overall less favourable to the claimant. In particular, it emphasised the role of economic party opinions and regression analysis, especially in relation to the factual presumption of price…
Traditionally August isn’t the busiest month for Chinese antitrust enforcement. This year is no exception. But that doesn’t mean that Chinese antitrust regulators weren’t active. On the contrary. It seems many of them used the ‘summer lull’ to work on a specific project: issuing antitrust compliance guidelines. Indeed, last month, three provincial offices of the…
With the recent decision given by the 13th Chamber of the Council of State on 24 May 2021,[1] the administrative fine given to the Turkish Pharmacists Association (“TPA”) by the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) on the grounds that some of its decisions and practices violated Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of…
In light of the European Commission’s recent gun-jumping investigation concerning Illumina’s acquisition of GRAIL, what has been the gun-jumping track record of the Serbian competition authority and what to expect in the future? What is the potential fine for gun-jumping in Serbia? The Serbian Competition Act prescribes a standstill obligation, providing that the parties…
