Historically, crises have been catalysts of legal and political change. On occasion of the COVID-19 emergency, this week (April 20th, 2020) the Ecuadorian competition agency (‘Superintendencia de Control del Poder de Mercado’) (“SCPM”) has arguably made one of the most important legal reforms since that country’s competition act was enacted in 2011. Ecuador has a…
Introduction While the world is dealing with novel coronavirus pandemic, many countries resorted to protectionist measures in order to preserve the quality of social life and stability of the economy from the effects caused by the outbreak. A package of measures to that end was introduced by the Turkish lawmakers via Act No. 7244 on…
The Coronavirus crisis has shown how governments and competition authorities around the world have been able and willing to act in a crisis-and the UK government and the CMA have been no exception. If we can do this to fight one (hopefully, short-term) crisis why can’t we show the same resolve in the face of…
On 13 March 2020 the government declared a national state of emergency as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The state of emergency is currently in force until 13 May. This article outlines the impact of this declaration on Commission for Protection of the Competition (CPC) activities. CPC operations Currently, the CPC is operating…
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has been very prompt with adopting various measures to continue its working during this period of pandemic. The CCI has issued several circulars and public notices from time to time to keep people updated about its functioning.[1] The CCI is currently functioning at a reduced capacity and most of…
On 31 March 2020, the Ukrainian Supreme Court (the “Supreme Court“) upheld the first decision of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the “AMC“) on the unlawfulness of state aid. In November 2018, the AMC recognised as unlawful state aid in the form of subsidies granted by the local government authority to the public utility company…
Our previous blog post covered the EU Commission’s (“EC”) Temporary Framework of 19 March 2020 (“Temporary Framework”), which aims at enabling national governments to use the full flexibility of State aid rules to support the economy in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since the adoption of the Temporary Framework a number of Member States…
After nearly two decades, on 16 October 2019 the European Commission (“Commission”) dusted off one of its most powerful enforcement tools, i.e. interim measures, amid its investigation against Broadcom. The application of interim measures was triggered by the perceived need of preventing the harmful consequences of Broadcom’s prima facie (i.e., at first sight) abusive conduct…
1. Brief overview of the existing legislation The current Competition law[1] in Latvia has been in force since 2002 and is the primary legislation of competition in Latvia. It covers all main infringement types, as well as rules on competition neutrality for publicly owned undertakings and restrictions on unfair competition. Its predecessors were Competition law…
Summary On 10 March 2020 the Court of Appeal upheld the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s (CAT) quashing of the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) decision that Pfizer and Flynn Pharma (Flynn) had abused their dominant positions in the market by pricing their epilepsy drug unfairly. Among other aspects, the Court of Appeal broadly upheld the CAT’s…
