General Court of the European Union

Competition proceedings, European Court of Justice, European Union, Facebook, Fundamental rights, General Court of the European Union, Investigations, Privacy, Request for information (RFI)

(Clifford Chance LLP, Belgium) and (Clifford Chance LLP, Italy)/ /Leave a comment

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…

European Union, General Court of the European Union, Joint ventures, Market definition, Merger control, Remedies, Turnover thresholds

(Latham & Watkins LLP)/ /1 Comment

The judgment provides useful jurisdictional clarifications for deals involving joint ventures (JVs) acting as an acquirer. The General Court (GC) confirms that when the true players behind the transaction are the parent companies, rather than the JV — because they did the deal valuation, negotiated the transaction structure, and determined the purchase price — the…

Competition proceedings, Dawn raids, Europe, Evidence, Fundamental rights, General Court of the European Union, Privacy

(White & Case, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

On 5 October 2020, the General Court of the European Union (GC) partially annulled decisions of the European Commission (EC) to order on-the-spot inspections (dawn raids) of a number of French retailers[1]. The GC held that the EC did not have sufficiently strong evidence to launch dawn raids in respect of some of the suspected…