Antitrust authorities around the globe are debating how best to assess sustainability agreements, i.e., agreements to achieve environmental objectives.  In the space of a few months in 2023, three leading regulators – the EU Commission, the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets, and the UK Competition and Markets Authority adopted guidance on the antitrust assessment…

With its decision issued on 30 March 2023 (Storytel Decision), the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) evaluated Storytel Turkey Yayıncılık Hizmetleri A.Ş.’s (Storytel) claim that some documents obtained during on-site inspections were covered by attorney-client privilege. This post presents a comparative analysis of the TCA’s approach regarding attorney-client privilege presented in the Storytel decision and the…

More than three years after it published the first draft guidelines on sustainability agreements, the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) adopted a final policy rule titled ‘ACM’s oversight of sustainability agreements’ (Policy Rule). The Policy Rule aims at providing insight into how the ACM applies competition rules to sustainability agreements and how the…

The Commission has followed a Long and Winding carbon-free Road since only a few years ago when it seemed to favour the Status Quo and promoted a robust competitive process as the best way to guarantee sustainable outcomes for consumers. The final chapter on Sustainability Agreements in the EU Horizontal Guidelines clearly shows a Commission…

On 1 June 2023, the European Commission (‘Commission’) adopted the new Horizontal Guidelines (together with the new Horizontal Block Exemption Regulations), which contain a new dedicated chapter for the assessment of sustainability agreements. The new Horizontal Guidelines will enter into force following their publication in the Official Journal of the EU (while the new Horizontal…

The European Commission (the Commission) has launched a project to codify EU law on the application of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to exclusionary abuses of dominant positions, such as exclusive dealing, tying and bundling, predatory pricing, refusals to supply and margin squeezes. The Commission published a…

The Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets (Autoriteit Consument & Markt, ‘ACM’) seems to have tuned down its antitrust enforcement activities in 2022; it did not impose a single fine for violation of the cartel prohibition or abuse of dominance but it upheld one fine in administrative appeal, i.e. the Samsung case. And of course,…

It would no longer be surprising to see competition or regulatory authorities blaming digital platforms for favouring their own services on their own platforms. In particular, in Europe, seeing the General Court’s Google decisions (see e.g., Johannes Persch’s blog posts on Shopping and Android) and the self-preferencing obligation of the Digital Markets Act (see, e.g.,…

Advocate General Kokott has found [1] that the General Court erred in law in requiring the European Commission to show anti-competitive effects of a merger with “strong probability” and that the scope of its judicial review was overly broad, notably in relation to economic evidence.   Key takeaways This case will give the Court of…

Background In 2004, the European Union modernised the rules and procedures that govern the enforcement of its competition law. The entry into force of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 on 1 May 2004 brought about the most comprehensive reform of the enforcement rules since they were first laid down in 1962. The EU moved from…