Co-authored by Patrick Harrison and Audrey Silvain, Sidley Austin LLP. There are few distinctions more important in EU competition law than that between the notion of a restriction “by object” – where a regulator need not demonstrate that conduct had anti-competitive effects – and the notion of a restriction “by effect,” where a regulator…
The summaries of the pleas of the actions for annulment lodged by Luxembourg and the Netherlands in the Fiat and Starbucks cases respectively were recently published (see here and here). Moreover, the pleas of Fiat in its own action for annulment against the Commission’s decision were also published (see here). These pleas are important because…
On January 20, 2016, the European Court of Justice (the Court) issued a seminal preliminary ruling on the relationship between EU and Member State leniency programmes in Case C‑428/14, DHL Express (Italy) Srl and DHL Global Forwarding (Italy) SpA v. Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM). The Court held that EU and Member…
Eturas runs the e-commerce back-end of 30 travel agents in Lithuania. An administrator message to each member informed them that the e-commerce functionality allowing each travel agent to grant discounts would be capped at 3 per cent. That message appeared in part of the system relating to “information messages”. The Court of Justice found that…
On 3 December 2015, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament (EP) approved a long-awaited regulation reforming the General Court of the European Union.[1]Council press release (886/15) of 3 December 2015, Court of Justice of the EU: Council adopts reform of General Court. This press release contains a link to the text…
When your company is raided by an antitrust regulatory agency, what recourse do you have? At first, the answer from the ECJ and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) was “not much”, as companies were not afforded the right to privacy. Over time, though, both courts have come to recognise that safeguards must be…
It is common for commercial property leases to contain restrictions on how a tenant may use the leased premises. They may, for example, restrict the ability of the tenant to sell certain types of products, by specifying permitted uses (through a ‘permitted user’ clause) or prohibited uses (through a ‘restricted user’ clause). Alternatively, restrictions may…
Belgian endives are a divisive vegetable: their bitterness delights some but repulses others. And even amongst Belgian endive enthusiast you’ll find some that prefer them raw – to maintain their crispness – while others like them cooked so that their bitterness comes out even more. But Belgian endives are no longer the exclusive battleground of…
The European Commission boldly announced its 2013 merger simplification package with the headline “Commission cuts red tape for businesses.” Nearly two years on , further refinement of the Commission’s procedures is needed to reduce the information required to be included in notification Form CO, and so shorten the time needed to “start the clock” on…
The EU’s Court of Justice has ruled (in Case C-345/14 Maxima Latvija) that a clause in a property lease, between a mall owner and a supermarket ‘anchor tenant’, which gives that tenant the ‘right to approve’ the granting of leases to competing stores is not anti-competitive ‘by object’. This means that any investigating authority/court would…
