The Financial Crisis – three lessons for antitrust (II)
The second of a series of three postings on antitrust and the financial crisis: to what extent was/will competition law enforcement (be) affected by the financial crisis?
European Union
Odile Jacob: the rehabilitation of the parking arrangement
More than six years after the case was launched, the General Court rendered its judgment in Case T-279/04, Editions Odile Jacob Sas v. Commission, relating to the appeal against a 2004 decision of the European Commission approving the acquisition by French publisher Lagardère of its rival Vivendi Universal Publishing (“VUP”). The saga begins in 2002,…
The Financial Crisis – three lessons for antitrust
The first of a series of three postings on antitrust and the financial crisis: did antitrust, in general, and a “lack of enforcement”, in particular, contribute to the financial crisis?
Undertakings with a (seemingly) divided self: Beware
It is commonly accepted that, pursuant to the principle of intragroup immunity, Article 101 TFEU cannot catch agreements or concerted practices between entities that belong to the same undertaking. Article 101 TFEU requires coordination between at least two undertakings: everything that happens within a single undertaking simply cannot be covered by Article 101 TFEU. Yet,…
Standardisation and the Commission’s new horizontal guidelines
The European Commission is currently preparing new guidelines for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements under Article 101 TFEU. A draft was presented for public consultation in May this year and the final version is expected before year’s end. The section on standardisation agreements has been updated in the light of recent experiences (such as…
The power of pre-existing agreements
In two recent decisions, the Commission considered the impact of cooperation agreements that the notifying parties had entered into before the notified transaction and came to two different conclusions. In Iberia/British Airways (decision of 14 July 2010), the Commission was confronted with combined shares of 70-80% for time-sensitive passengers on two city pairs, London-Madrid and…
The scope of judicial review in question
In a speech delivered last week at the IBA annual competition conference, Commissioner Almunia engaged the audience on the sensitive topic of due process and competition enforcement. Among the reasons justifying his overall satisfaction with the current EU enforcement system, he mentioned the review by the European courts, which forms “an integral part of competition…
The Commission too lenient in merger control? Really?
An increasing number of voices are claiming that the Commission’s enforcement policy under the ECMR is becoming too lenient. At the end of last year, two Commission officials, Mr. Parplies and Mr. Maier-Rigaud, published a detailed study on the drop in enforcement decisions (prohibitions, approvals with conditions and termination of merger agreements resulting from the…
The General Court’s Judgment In AstraZeneca, Interacting With Regulatory Authorities
In my last post, I discussed the General Court’s findings on market definition and dominance analysis in its AstraZeneca judgment. In this post, I review the Court’s findings on abuse. In its decision, the Commission held that Astra had abused its dominant position (1) by providing patent authorities misleading launch date information when applying for…
Microsoft / Yahoo! Search Business – Substantive issues – Counterfactuals, auctions and two-sided markets
In my last post, I focused on a procedural element of the Commission’s Microsoft/Yahoo! decision. The decision is also very interesting from a substantive point of view, and shows the Commission’s determination to investigate the transaction in some detail, even though on the face of it (as the Phase I clearance subsequently confirmed), it raised…