The Court of Justice of the European Union has now delivered its judgment in the Deutsche Bahn[1]Case C-583/13P – Deutsche Bahn and others v European Commission, judgment of 18 June 2015. case. This case concerns important practical principles which govern the conduct of European Commission dawn raids (on-the-spot surprise inspections used to investigate possible infringements…
Earlier this month, Advocate General Wahl delivered his opinion in the Deutsche Bahn[1]Case C-583/13P – Deutsche Bahn and others v European Commission (ECLI:EU:C:2014:2365), Opinion of Advocate General Wahl, 12 February 2015. case. This case concerns important practical principles which govern the conduct of European Commission dawn raids (on-the-spot surprise inspections used to investigate possible infringements…
In April 2014, just before the elections, the European Parliament approved in first reading the draft Commission Regulation on the Telecoms Single Market Regulation (“TSM” or “Connected Continent”). One of the provisions covered net neutrality, shortening the list of “exceptional” cases in which ISPs could block or slow down on-line content. Moreover, such “traffic management…
Inductive reasoning is sometimes explained by using either the ‘duck test’ (“if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”) or the ‘elephant test’ (“it is difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it”). In EU competition law, it sometimes…
Just over a year ago, I wrote (rather extensively) on the European Commission’s public consultation entitled “Towards more effective EU Merger Control” in which the Commission proposed to (i) expand its powers to review non-controlling minority interests and (ii) streamline the case referral system between the European Commission and NCAs (see here). Our regular readers…
On 9 July 2014, the European Commission published a White Paper setting out proposals to amend the EU merger control system. The proposed reform of the system is the most significant in the last 10 years and could have an impact on many corporate transactions. The proposals The proposals deal with the following: the expansion…
On 10 June 2014, the Polish Parliament adopted a significant set of amendments to the Polish Competition Law Act (the “Act”). Having received Presidential approval on 30 June 2014, the amended Act is now waiting for publication. The changes are expected to come into force relatively soon. The amendments will take effect 6 months after…
Co-authored by Nicola Boyle, Tom Bolster and Boris Bronfentrinker, Hausfeld On 5 June 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) clarified the full extent of cartel damages that can be recovered in Europe. The ECJ ruled that the civil liability of cartelists also extends to so-called “umbrella pricing”. This term describes pricing…
Co-authored by: Alexandre Verheyden, Bernard Amory and Laurent de Muyter, Jones Day, Brussels The European Union has a new regime for assessing technology licensing agreements under EU competition law. The new rules include a new technology transfer block exemption regulation (“TTBER”), which exempts certain bilateral licensing agreements from antitrust rules, and revised Technology Transfer Guidelines…
About ten days ago, the Council of the EU failed to reach an agreement on the proposed increase in the number of judges sitting at the General Court of the European Union. The Council thus buried ‑ and for quite a while – a proposal which could have helped the General Court reduce its currently…
