At the end of 2023, the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (“CPC”) issued a key decision related to an abuse of dominance case in the pharmaceutical sector. The decision, which is expected to have a significant impact on the parallel export of pharmaceuticals, provides a clue to the CPC’s approach when parallel export concerns…
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (the “CMA”) has published a research report on competition and market power in labour markets. The report is likely to reinforce the CMA’s determination to use its competition law powers to tackle anti-competitive behaviour in labour markets, as well as the case for broader legislative reform. The report…
Introduction On 21 December 2023 the Court changed its interpretation of EU competition law. The three judgments handed down that day asked as many questions as they answered, and it was obvious that further clarification would be required. Already in January 2024 two further rulings – Case C‑128/21 Lietuvos notarų rūmai, and others and Case…
On 22 September 2023, the European Commission adopted a decision imposing a fine of €376.36 million on microprocessor manufacturer Intel. This decision relates to the facts that had already been sanctioned in an earlier decision of 13 May 2009. How can this apparent inconsistency be explained? In fact, the first decision was annulled in January…
Foundation models are not new to society or technological development. The deep neural network and self-supervised learning they are based on have existed for decades. However, the explosion and ramping up in user adoption of apps based on Large Language Models (LLMs) working on natural language processing (NLP) has shaken the whole tech industry during…
Looking back on the year 2023, this note aims to give an update on the state of play in Chinese merger control. In particular, it looks at how merger control has evolved since China’s main antitrust statute – the Anti-Monopoly Law (“AML”) – was amended for the first time in summer 2022. I will look…
The French competition authority, the Autorité de la Concurrence, has recently published a cartel decision (see here) which deals with a cartel of industry associations and their members with regard to product qualities and product information. The case is an important reminder to industry associations and companies of the boundaries between antitrust compliant lobbying and…
“The estimated damage cannot be less than 5% of the purchase price paid for reasons of effectiveness under EU law.” This was recently stated by the German Federal Court of Justice about claims for damages due to the Dieselgate scandal. However, the Court’s reasoning in favour of this legal lower limit for damages might equally,…
2023 was the year in which fines in the ongoing “hub & spoke war” reached the staggering amount of € 733 million. An accomplishment haunted by the rulings from the Constitutional Court finding that the Competition Authority have been conducting dawn raids (including in the hub & spoke cases) illegally. This was also the year…
On 9 January 2024, Apple offered several commitments under Article 9 Regulation 1/2003 to address the competition concerns of the European Commission in the markets for mobile wallets on iOS, inter alia to ensure effective interoperability with the Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality on iOS. This post will give an initial overview of Apple’s proposed…
