In its first in-person event in more than two years, Canada’s Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) hosted a summit on September 20, 2022, exploring the intersection between competition law and environmental/sustainability initiatives (details on the Competition and Green Growth Summit are available here). In doing so, the Bureau joins other agencies that have examined the impact…
On 8 July 2021, the Commission found that Daimler, BMW and the Volkswagen Group (Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche) violated competition law by colluding on technical development in the area of emission cleaning for new passenger diesel cars, fining the latter two a total of €875 million. The current hype regarding competition law and sustainability comes…
On 6 May 2021, the European Commission (“Commission”) published its evaluation of the Horizontal Block Exemption Regulations and the Guidelines on Horizontal co-operation agreements (“HGL”) (as reported here). The evaluation indicated that revision and clarity is needed in various areas, inter alia for sustainability agreements. The Dutch Authority for Consumer & Markets (“ACM”) announced on…
A February 4 conference on competition policy and the Green Deal sponsored by the European Commission’s (the Commission’s) Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) highlighted the divergences of opinions among antitrust officials and other stakeholders on how competition policy should support sustainability objectives. DG COMP aims to take a leading role on sustainability issues; its October-November…
On 13 October 2020, the European Commission (EC) published a call for contributions to gather ideas on how EU competition rules (State aid, antitrust, and merger control) and sustainability policies can best work together. The aim is to gather the widest set of views possible to determine how the competition rules should be amended (if…
Introduction On 9 July 2020 the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (‘ACM’) published its draft sustainability guidelines (‘Draft Guidelines’) containing ACM’s proposed approach of assessing the compatibility of sustainability initiatives with competition law. A new feature in the Draft Guidelines is the proposal to take into account in the competition law assessment of environmental…
