On 2 December 2020, the European Commission published a Notice to Stakeholders on Brexit and EU competition law.[1] It essentially reflects the UK position as set out in CMA guidance published on 1 December 2020.[2] These papers are equivalent to the divorce papers governing the children’s custody. Who has the kids and when over the…
Starting in 2016, the EU set out the shift to high-capacity 5G networks with the adoption of the “5G for Europe Action Plan”.[1] These days, the buildout of the 5G network throughout Europe is starting. Slovenia,[2] the Czech Republic,[3] Slovakia,[4] Portugal,[5] and Sweden[6] are among the first Member States to commence the 5G spectrum auctions…
On November 25, 2020, the European Commission (EC) published its proposed Data Governance Regulation (the DGR), which will create a new legal framework to encourage the development of a European single market for data. The DGR, proposed in the EC’s February 2020 Digital Strategy, is the first of a wave of regulatory and antitrust reforms…
Competition authorities are increasingly scrutinizing Google around the globe: The European Commission was the first authority to investigate Google and has issued three record-level fines in Google Shopping, Google Android and Google AdSense. In the US, the DoJ has recently filed a complaint against Google with the US Supreme Court arguing that Google abuses its…
The Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) issued today its judgment in Case C-59/19 Wikingerhof v. Booking.com. This ruling will certainly be of great interest to the corporate victims of abuses of a dominant digital platform. This judgment addresses both the nature of the action which alleged victims of…
Last week (November 17, 2020), Ecuador’s Executive Branch issued the second package of reforms to its competition regime this year (Executive Decree 1193). The two main changes have to do with merger control and with restrictions ‘by object’. Following last April’s implementation of an expedited concentration procedure, the new reform now seeks to reduce the…
The new competition law 27,442 enacted in Argentina in 2018 paved the way to a refreshed model of competition law in Argentina. The new law promised to create an independent National Competition Authority and the implementation of a suspensory merger control regime, among others. However, the recent change in government and the irruption of the…
The European Court of Auditors’ Special Report published on 19 November 2020 is an interesting read for a dark COVID winter evening: “The Commission’s EU merger control and antitrust proceedings: a need to scale up market oversight“.[1] In respect of merger control, the Report (and the European Commission’s Response to the ECA contained in it)…
Spotlight on Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy’ The calls for Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy’ or ‘strategic sovereignty’ have been gaining increasing traction in Brussels policy circles over the past few years. With its origins in the fields of defence and security, the idea of Europe’s autonomy has started to resonate beyond these areas, extending to foreign and economic…
The theme of antitrust in crisis is very timely for the current global climate, but more so than ever for Australia where we had already dealt with unprecedented drought, bushfires and now the global COVID-19 pandemic. Not for a century have Governments had to manage a health and economic crisis of such intensity, scale or…
