On 14 January 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) confirmed that participation in a bid-rigging cartel ends when the basic characteristics of the contract between the “successful” tenderer and the contracting (public) authority are determined (C-450/19 – Kilpailu- ja kuluttajavirasto, ECLI:EU:C:2021:10). This has a major impact on the limitation period, which…
In today’s judgment in the case C‑595/18 P – Goldman Sachs v Commission, the European Court of Justice (ECJ or Court) expanded the rebuttable presumption of decisive influence relating to the parental liability doctrine. According to the parental liability doctrine, a parent company can be liable for anti-competitive conduct of its subsidiary when the parent…
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…
The Court order of 29 October 2020 struck by the President of the General Court in a dispute between Facebook and the European Commission is probably the first time in a while where the essence of a case against one of the Big Tech firms lies not in what those companies are (or are not)…
On 25 November 2020, the French Competition Authority (FCA) announced that it was amending its decision-making practice regarding responses to calls for tenders by subsidiaries of the same group. Up until now, the FCA considered that it was unlawful for subsidiaries of the same group to submit separate tenders in the same public procurement procedure…
The Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) issued today its judgment in Case C-59/19 Wikingerhof v. Booking.com. This ruling will certainly be of great interest to the corporate victims of abuses of a dominant digital platform. This judgment addresses both the nature of the action which alleged victims of…
On 22 October 2020, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed in Silver Plastics that the General Court (GC) is not bound to accept a request for the examination of witnesses when it has sufficiently proven that an undertaking took part in an anti-competitive agreement. Executive Summary The ECJ has confirmed that there is…
In the context of ongoing antitrust investigations into Facebook Inc.’s (‘Facebook’) data-related practices (AT.40628) and Facebook marketplace (AT.40684), on 13 March 2020 the European Commission (‘Commission’) issued two formal requests for information (‘RFIs’), requiring the company to produce a large number of internal documents. Facebook challenged the RFIs before the General Court of the European…
Background On July 15, 2020, the General Court annulled the 2016 Commission Decision ordering Ireland to recover EUR 13 billion of illegal State aid from Apple,[1] chiefly, because the Commission had not demonstrated to the requisite legal standard that an advantage had been granted.[2] On the same day, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President M. Vestager released…
Months before the prospective final Brexit, the ECJ laid what is in all likelihood the last State aid milestone on the UK’s path out of the European Union – at the same time, the ECJ’s judgment in the „Hinkley Point C“ case (Case C-594/18 P Austria v Commission) is a farewell gift to the remaining…
