Introduction On 13 November 2023, the District Court of Rotterdam (“Court”) handed down its judgment in the Samsung case. This ruling gives insights on whether a supplier, by actively pursuing its resale price recommendations can be held to restrict competition by object, even if its conduct does not involve any sanctions (or threat thereof) or…

The Dutch case concerning the Apple App Store appears to make a (welcome) comeback. The case that started in 2019 came to a rather disappointing end in the summer of 2022 when the Dutch competition authority issued a public statement that gave the impression that it was satisfied with Apple’s adjustments to the App Store…

On 2 October 2023, the Dutch competition authority ACM published its decision on the objections filed by Apple on 13 July 2023 (decision on objection) against the ACM’s decision of 24 August 2021 imposing an order subject to periodic penalty payments on Apple for infringing the abuse of dominance provision laid down in Article 24…

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…

In a recent judgment of 31 May 2023, the Amsterdam District Court (the District Court) accepted jurisdiction to adjudicate a damages case against Google Netherlands B.V. (located in Amsterdam) as well as against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., two US-based entities that were fined by the European Commission in the Google Shopping case for abuse…

Introduction The MTB/Heineken case concerns the question of whether a claimant in EU antitrust follow-on damages proceedings can use a parent company that is not addressed in an authority’s fining decision as an anchor defendant for jurisdiction under the Brussels Ibis Regulation. The Dutch Supreme Court intends to refer preliminary questions on this topic to…

On 22 February, the District Court of Amsterdam decided to refer preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in order to receive guidance enabling it to assess the legality of the EU antitrust rules of price parity clauses (PPs) used by Booking.com, an online travel agent platform (OTA).* More specifically,…

On 13 March 2023, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate of The Netherlands published the first draft of its implementing regulation (the ‘Draft Bill’) subject to public consultation until the 10th of April, to attribute its national competition authority (ACM) with the power to monitor compliance with the DMA in its national territory. The…

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,…

Sustainability as a policy priority It is no news that sustainability is an important topic of competition policy across the EU. There is clear consensus that competition law enforcement should be careful not to hinder cooperation between companies, even competitors, that facilitates the realisation of or progress towards reaching sustainability goals of climate policy (or…