On June 6, 2024, AG Collins rendered his opinion in the referral request by the Amsterdam District Court (“ADC”) regarding price parity clauses and product market definition in the context of litigation involving Booking.com (“Booking”), the online platform acting as an intermediary between end customers and hotels, also called online travel agent (OTA). Summary…
The European Court of Justice has issued its judgment in Deutsche Telekom confirming that the European Commission must pay “a standard rate” of interest to companies that have been awarded a reduction or annulment of their antitrust fine on appeal. The European Commission must now apply this clear ruling to a number of claims for…
According to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, the two greatest tyrants on Earth are chance and time. The word ‘tyrant’ is derived from Ancient Greek ‘tyrannos’ to describe an ‘absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution’. Certainly, actions for damages in competition law may depend on numerous factors substantially determined by chance (e.g. questions…
Interpreting and applying Article 102 TFEU – at least in all difficult cases that typically reach the courts – requires a combined reliance on both ‘reason’ and ‘fiat’. It requires reliance on ‘reason’, by which I mean substantive reasoning about how a case should be decided, because no case is exactly like any other, and…
Let the waves (or the CJEU) carry you where the light cannot. On January 18, the CJEU delivered its judgment in the Lietuvos notarų rūmai case (C-128/21), where it dealt with the scope of the Wouters exception to the prohibition of cartels (see originally C-309/99). Here, the CJEU had to decide whether a decision of…
Introduction On 21 December 2023 the Court changed its interpretation of EU competition law. The three judgments handed down that day asked as many questions as they answered, and it was obvious that further clarification would be required. Already in January 2024 two further rulings – Case C‑128/21 Lietuvos notarų rūmai, and others and Case…
On 21 December 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its highly anticipated judgment in the European Super League Company (ESL) case (C-333/21), alongside two other rulings dealing with the application of EU competition and free movement law to sports governance: International Skating Union (ISU) v Commission (C-141/21 P) and SA…
On 21 December 2023, the CJEU hit the newspaper headlines after handing down the judgments in Case C-333/21 European Super League Company, Case C-124/21 P International Skating Union v Commission, and Case C-680/21 Royal Antwerp Football Club (see an analysis of those cases from the antitrust perspective here). All three cases raised complex questions regarding the…
On 21st December 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) achieved a “hattrick” with three important judgments on the interplay of sports and EU Law. In particular, the CJEU delivered three judgments on sports governing bodies’ statutes compliance with EU Law, especially EU Competition Law. In its ISU (C-124/21 P), ESL (C-333/21),…
On 9 November 2023, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed that the European Commission (EC) was right to impose two separate fines on Altice for breaching standstill rules and failing to notify its acquisition of PT Portugal, but lowered the fine for failure to notify by €3.1 million. The European Union (EU) merger control…
