On September 13, the European Commission (Commission) proposed a regulation creating a new framework for screening foreign direct investments into the European Union (EU). The proposal would address the potential for divergence among existing Member State screening mechanisms and create a new oversight role for the Commission itself. The framework could affect acquisitions in a…
On 6 September, the EU’s highest court, the Court of Justice (CJEU), released its long-awaited decision in the Intel case, in which the Commission imposed a fine of €1.06 billion – at the time, the largest fine ever imposed by a competition regulator on an individual company. This is a very important decision in light…
On June 21-23, the OECD held a roundtable on the theme of “Algorithms and Collusion,” as part of a wider work stream on competition in the digital economy. The OECD roundtable reflects a shift in the debate over the antitrust implications of big data from concerns about the potential for companies to hoard big data,…
On May 10, 2017, the European Commission published the final report on its sector inquiry on competition in the e-commerce sector (the E-Commerce Report) and a mid-term review of its digital single market (DSM) initiative (the DSM Review), both of which were originally announced in May 2015. The E-Commerce Report confirms that the Commission has…
With her delivery of the UK’s Article 50 notice on March 29, Theresa May has launched the two-year negotiating process leading to the first exit of a Member State from the European Union (EU). The negotiations will affect virtually every economic and policy area in Europe, including competition policy. These effects will be felt first…
The EU Commission recently launched a consultation on ‘procedural and jurisdictional aspects of EU Merger Control’ (the Consultation), which most notably proposes the introduction of a deal-size threshold in the EU Merger Regulation (EUMR) to capture significant acquisitions where the target does not meet the current turnover-based thresholds. The Consultation follows a number of comments…
On January 20, 2016, the European Court of Justice (the Court) issued a seminal preliminary ruling on the relationship between EU and Member State leniency programmes in Case C‑428/14, DHL Express (Italy) Srl and DHL Global Forwarding (Italy) SpA v. Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM). The Court held that EU and Member…
On 4th November, the European Commission published a far-reaching consultation (the Consultation) on proposals to boost the enforcement powers of national competition authorities (NCAs) and to address differences between national competition enforcement systems in the European Union. The Consultation builds on the 2014 Communication on Ten Years of Regulation 1/2003 (the Communication) but also reflects…
Co-authored by Jay Modrall and Shan Hu. The authors of this article would like to thank Marc Waha, partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, for his insightful comments. 1 Introduction The Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has recently stepped up its cartel enforcement activities and for the first time has published non-confidential versions of…
On November 12, 2013, the European Commission published a summary of its December 20, 2012 decision (the “Decision”) accepting commitments offered by members of the Thomson Reuters group (“Thomson Reuters”). The Decision ended a three-year-long investigation that began in October 2009 into Thomson Reuters’ alleged abuse of a dominant position in a market defined as…
