The last few weeks have been momentous for Indian competition law – the Competition (Amendment) Act, 2023 (Amendment) received Presidential assent on 11 April 2023, after it was passed by both houses of the Indian Parliament. The lead-up to this moment was almost five years in the making. The Amendments are a product of extensive…
Are big companies necessarily bad? If they are, how can we ensure that companies do not become too big and too bad? How can markets remain free, fair and competitive? Competition law has tried to answer these questions for centuries, with the most recent debates revolving around the alleged anti-competitive conduct of large tech companies….
Introduction Ride-hailing apps are present practically in every country from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In places like Colombia and Brazil, they entered the market as early as 2013 – 2014 respectively, according to research authored by Resende and Lima. Apps like Uber, Cabify and Didi have emerged and generated pressure on the traditional…
You’ve probably all seen the terror ChatGPT has unleashed on white collars, from research analysts to copywriters, over the past two months. What about lawyers, economists, or paralegals working in competition law? Let’s summarise for those who haven’t heard yet: ChatGPT is a chatbot created by OpenAI. It became the fastest-growing app in history, reaching…
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…
The level of enforcement of competition law in Slovakia in 2022 was noticeably lower compared to previous years. Outside merger control, where the Slovak Antimonopoly Office’s (AMO) activity is less influenced by its leadership, the AMO was rather inactive. It issued no relevant decisions in the area of restrictive agreements and carried out only a…
The wheels of the German competition authority’s enforcement of its dedicated rules on digital markets have started to turn (on the technical and substantive aspects of Section 19a GWB, see previous posts here and here). According to the recently introduced rules, the Bundeskartellamt first formally determines that an undertaking is of paramount significance for competition…
Last week, the European Commission adopted an updated version of its Informal Guidance Notice (“the IGN”), the mechanism that allows businesses to seek clarity regarding the compliance of specific activities with EU competition law. The substance of the IGN is animated by “guidance letters”, informal documents intended to provide legal certainty to undertakings facing novel…
On September 29th 2022, the Commission published Guidelines on the application of Union competition law to collective agreements regarding the working conditions of solo self-employed persons (hereinafter: the Guidelines). The first draft of this document was released almost a year ago as part of a package including a proposed Directive on platform work. The Guidelines,…
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…
