The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) focus significantly on reducing inequalities globally (see, for example Goal 10 of UN SDG). Social inequality across the globe is premised on various parameters, including gender, race, income, religion and ethnicity. For instance, UN Women highlighted that women globally make around 77 cents for every dollar made by…
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has not managed to suspend the effects of the European Commission’s designation decision (for comment on the designation decisions, see here). However, the appeal that ByteDance directed at the designation decision will be given the benefit of an expedited procedure. This is the first time that the General Court uttered a…
With 2023 now in hindsight, it is time to take stock of what happened in the Swedish competition law arena last year. To sum up, while the number of dawn raids remains low, the Swedish Competition Authority (‘the SCA’) has been active during 2023, carrying out a sector inquiry into the food industry and pursuing…
In 2023, Brazilian competition policy celebrated three significant landmarks: first, the 20th anniversary of its first leniency agreement; second, the launch of CADE’s cartel sanction calculation guidelines; and third, the establishment of a partnership between the Brazilian competition authority CADE and the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) for efficiency improvements in the investigation of…
Let the waves (or the CJEU) carry you where the light cannot. On January 18, the CJEU delivered its judgment in the Lietuvos notarų rūmai case (C-128/21), where it dealt with the scope of the Wouters exception to the prohibition of cartels (see originally C-309/99). Here, the CJEU had to decide whether a decision of…
Year at a glance 2023 saw further consolidation of the banking sector, with OTP Bank buying NKBM, creating the second largest bank in the country. In MOL / OMV Slovenija, the European Commission (“EC”) cleared (after a Phase II investigation and subject to an up-front-buyer remedy) MOL’s acquisition of OMV’s gas station network in Slovenia….
In Denmark, the Danish Competition Council is the principal enforcer of competition law, with the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority acting as the day-to-day caretaker, including rendering decisions in (minor) cases. Decisions from either the Competition and Consumer Authority or the Competition Council may be appealed to the Danish Competition Appeals Board or the judiciary,…
The D-day for the Digital Markets Act (DMA) compliance is fast approaching. Starting from March 2024, the regulatory framework’s substantive obligations will start to apply to the six designated gatekeepers concerning 22 of their core platform services (on the first designation decisions issued by the European Commission see here). In the meantime, the European Commission…
2023 was certainly an eventful year for competition law and policy in Peru. Its Competition Agency, the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI, after its Spanish acronym) was not immune from the instability of Peruvian politics. Two months after the failed coup d’état perpetrated by Pedro Castillo,…
At the end of 2023, the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (“CPC”) issued a key decision related to an abuse of dominance case in the pharmaceutical sector. The decision, which is expected to have a significant impact on the parallel export of pharmaceuticals, provides a clue to the CPC’s approach when parallel export concerns…
