Introduction On Wednesday 25 October 2023, the General Court of the European Union ruled in Case T-136/19 on the application of the prohibition of abuse of dominance under Article 102 TFEU. The judgment concerns the annulment of a Commission decision condemning Bulgarian gas holding company BEH and subsidiaries for an unauthorised refusal of access. The…

The following is a selection of some of the most important developments in German competition law and policy in 2021.  It has been a busy year for the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”), inter alia because the new rules for digital companies took effect.  The following covers cases under these new rules, abuse of dominance, merger…

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…

On 10 September 2021, certain significant changes to Austria’s competition law entered into force, although some of the merger control related changes will apply only as of 1 January 2022: Merger control. The amendments include a revision of Austria’s revenue-based merger control threshold, the introduction of the significant lessening of competition test, and a broadening…

Under Swiss law, a proposed concentration triggers a mandatory pre-merger notification if one of the undertakings concerned was held dominant, irrespective of the statutory turnover thresholds. It was previously unclear whether this criterion had to be met at the time of signing or at the time of closing. The authority has now clarified this question….

On 07.11.2019, the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) concluded its preliminary inquiry regarding Google’s[1] bidding system and decided not to initiate a full-fledged investigation. Said preliminary inquiry had been initiated upon a 28.02.2019 dated complaint made with confidentiality request claiming that: Google is in dominant position in search services, Google’s Shopping Unit and AdWords are crucial…

Competition authorities are tuned into mobile app stores, trying to implement classical competition rules into non-traditional digital markets. This tendency is loudly revealed when European Commission (“Commission”) deemed Google LLC (“Google”) as the dominant undertaking in the app stores for the Android mobile operating system (i.e. Google Play Store) and hit the online search and…

The Act on Combating the Unfair Use of Contractual Advantage in the Trade in Agricultural and Food Products (the “Act”) entered into force on July 12th, 2017. Its essential goal is to eliminate unfair market practices from every stage of the food product supply chain. The new legislation was to be (and still is) a…

In its decision passed on February 8, 2018 the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed a fine of INR 135.86 crores (approximately $1.36 bn) on Google for abusing its dominant position by engaging in search bias vis-à-vis Google flights service and imposing unfair terms in the intermediation agreements with website owners incorporating Google’s search…

On December 19, 2017, the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) published a press release on its preliminary assessment in the ongoing Facebook dominance probe, accompanied by a background paper (available in English here). The FCO considers that Facebook abuses its dominant position through imposing unfair general terms and conditions (“t&cs”). The published materials provide some interesting…