Commitments

Commitments, Merger control, Türkiye

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Introduction There have been some exciting developments in Turkish competition law recently, not least of which was the Turkish Competition Board’s (“Board”) first-ever judgment on non-compliance with commitments. To recap, the Board approved the merger between Luxottica Group S.p.A. and Essilor International S.A. back in 2018, subject to behavioural and structural commitments. To review the…

Apple, Commitments, Competition, Digital Markets Act, European Commission

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On 9 January 2024, Apple offered several commitments under Article 9 Regulation 1/2003 to address the competition concerns of the European Commission in the markets for mobile wallets on iOS, inter alia to ensure effective interoperability with the Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality on iOS. This post will give an initial overview of Apple’s proposed…

Abuse of dominance, Commitments, Effects-based, European Commission, European Union, Investigations, Market definition, Tying and Bundling, Unfair trading practices

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Factual background During the summer of 2020, news came out about a claim made by Slack against Microsoft for abusing its dominance by tying Teams to the Microsoft and Office 365 software packages. The claim at the time was that Microsoft had been forcing millions of users to install Teams and denied them the possibility…

Abuse of dominance, Amazon, As Efficient Competitor, Commitments, Discrimination, European Commission

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For unknown reasons, DG COMP persists in hiding the jewels when it comes to discrimination cases. This covers BdKEP/Deutsche Post AG from 2004, where DG COMP established (recital 93) how Article 102 TFEU covers three forms of discrimination, two exclusionary and one exploitive. As explained later, these have been referred to as horizontal-, vertical-, and…

Commitments, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Competition enforcement, Judicial review, Jurisdiction, Sport

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On 16 January 2023, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (the “COMESA” or the “Common Market”) Competition Appeals Board (the “Appeals Board”) published its seminal decision upholding the commitments provided by the Confédération Africaine de Football (the “CAF”) in relation to contracts for the commercialization of CAF’s media and marketing rights (the “Intermediation…

Abuse of dominance, Cartels, Commitments, Competition law, India, Leniency, Merger control, Settlement

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The Competition (Amendment) Bill (‘Bill’) was first published for public consultation in February 2020 and it is only on 5 August 2022 that it has finally been tabled before the Indian Parliament. The Bill is a concerted effort to harmonize competition law with the evolving realities of businesses today. The Bill proposes to amend both…

Abuse of dominance, Commitments, European Commission, European Union, Excessive pricing

(DLA Piper Ireland), (DLA Piper UK), (DLA Piper Belgium), and (DLA Piper Romania)/ /Leave a comment

Back in April 2017, The Times ran a story detailing how a drug giant had a “secret plan” to destroy a cancer medicine unless large price rises were agreed to by national purchasing authorities.  A month later, the European Commission opened an investigation into Aspen.  Almost four years later in February 2021, it accepted commitments…

Commitments, European Court of Justice, European Union, Proportionality

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Today, the Court of Justice annulled the Commission decision that made commitments legally binding for Paramount. This decision is the first annulment of a commitment decision since the adoption of Regulation 1/2003. The Court held, in particular, that the Commission must assess the proportionality of the commitments with regard to the protection of the contractual…

Commitments, European Commission, European Union, Excessive pricing, Pharmaceuticals

(DLA Piper Belgium), (DLA Piper Romania), (DLA Piper Ireland), and (DLA Piper Denmark)/ /Leave a comment

What are commitments? The recent effort by the Commission to settle the Aspen case suggests that commitment decisions are the preferred route to settle complex excessive pricing cases at EU-level.  Previous commitment cases where high prices have been at issue include Rambus, Standard & Poor’s and Gazprom.  The EU rules allow the Commission to make…

Commitments, Ireland, Merger control

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325 days from first filing, the CCPC just recently cleared Live Nation’s acquisition of sole control of Irish concert promoter, MCD Productions, a merger of Ireland’s largest ticketing company and venue operator with the country’s biggest concert and event promoter.  Days later, the CCPC announced clearance of a three-to-two merger among Irish providers of commercial…