The European Commission (the Commission) closed out its ambitious 2020 antitrust reform agenda with the long-awaited consultation (the Consultation) on reform of the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (the VBER) and related Guidelines (the VGL), published on December 18, 2020. The Consultation’s proposals, which closely follow the Commission’s October 2020 Inception Impact Assessment (the Inception Impact…
The antitrust watchdog of India recently in Harshita Chawla v Whatsapp and Facebook[1] held that Whatsapp’s proposed model of integrating its payments app called ‘Whatsapp Pay’ (‘WPay’) within its messaging app is not anti-competitive since it does not constitute ‘tying in’ due to lack of coercion. In reaching such a conclusion the Competition Commission of…
2020 was a particularly busy year as regards competition law developments in Greece, despite the COVID-19 crisis. Pushing ahead The primary goal of the new leadership of the Greek Competition Commission (“HCC”) in late 2019/early 2020 was to clear a stockpile of pending cases, many of which had been initiated prior to 2011. This…
Main developments competition law and policy 2020: The Netherlands As part of the series of posts on the main 2020 developments in key jurisdictions by many authors of the Kluwer Competition Law Blog, we provide you with an overview of developments in the Netherlands. In sum, we saw an upsurge in the enforcement of the…
In this article, we highlight the five most important developments and trends in Canadian competition law in 2020 and discuss what to watch for in 2021. 1. Impact of COVID-19 As in other jurisdictions, the enforcement of competition law in Canada last year was affected by the widespread social, health, and economic effects of…
The December 24 announcement that the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) had reached an agreement in principle on a new Trade and Cooperation Agreement (the TCA) was greeted with sighs of relief on both sides of the Channel. For competition lawyers and parties engaged in M&A activities, however, the work of clarifying…
The Italian Competition Authority (“ICA”) and Italian courts – and also the Italian legislator – have been quite active in 2020, despite the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. Covid-19 Covid-19 was of course one of the main factors driving competition law and policy developments in Italy in 2020, bringing to light existing trends…
In the last few months, Competition Commission of India (CCI) took what most might view as an extremely lenient stance in two cartel cases; what is known as the most serious violations of competition law. Hard-core cartels are perceived as the “supreme evil of antitrust”[1]. It is then perplexing to understand why such cartels operating…
Digital antitrust Introduction The accelerated digitalisation of the economy has brought about fundamental structural changes: the emergence of world-class platforms, which benefit from network effects and access to considerable financial resources, the rapid shift from physical distribution to online sales, the appearance of new products and services based on technological innovation, algorithms, artificial intelligence or…
Early Warnings: Canada’s Regulators Issue Warning Letters to Mobile App Companies Anita Banicevic and Joshua Hollenberg, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP In late November 2020, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) and the Competition Bureau (Bureau) announced the issuance of 36 warning letters to…
