Introduction In recent years, the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) has markedly intensified its scrutiny of undertakings operating in the cosmetics sector with greater frequency, predominantly based on allegations of resale price maintenance and the restriction of online sales in this industry. In most of these investigations, the relevant undertakings have admitted the violation and applied for the settlement procedure. Accordingly, upon the acceptance of the settlement applications by the TCA, a reduction of 25% was applied to the administrative fines imposed on these undertakings. Furt ..read more

Introduction On March 21st Advocate General Emiliou handed down his Opinion in Joined Cases C-611/22P and C-625/22P, respectively Illumina Inc. v. European Commission and Grail LLC, and Illumina Inc. v. European Commission. One can argue that the Emiliou Opinion is an exercise in throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at the position of the European Commission and the judgment of the General Court in respect of the scope of the first subparagraph of Article 22(1) EUMR. Nevertheless, despite the almost C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien feel of the authors debating in The Eagle and Child (and ninthly ..read more

Is competition law fit for purpose? Do we need better tools to make markets fair? How far should government go to ‘fix’ market structures? It’s impossible to attend an antitrust conference these days without discussing these questions under the umbrella of competition & industrial policy. From decades of broad consensus championing competitive neutrality and ‘letting the market work’, the pendulum – like it or not – has forcefully swung back towards more interventionism and market making & shaping. While not taking a position on whether more market engineering is right or wrong, the c ..read more

After an initial period of indifferent interest, the current Canadian government continues to toughen its approach to the review of foreign investments in Canada. Two important developments in March 2024 underscore this trend. First, the government enacted substantial amendments to the Investment Canada Act (ICA) on March 22, 2024.These amendments, the most significant since 2009, will come into effect on a date to be fixed by the federal government. Based on statements from government officials, it is likely that certain amendments will come into effect in relatively short order, while other ..read more

The FSR and public procurement The primary objective of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) is to address the influence of foreign subsidies that may distort the integrity of the EU’s internal market. This encompasses scenarios where recipients gain an unfair advantage enabling them to secure public procurement contracts within the EU at the expense of equitable competition. Since 12 October 2023, companies (whether or not established in a Member State) must notify their public procurement tenders in the EU to the Commission when the two following thresholds are met: (i) the estimated value ..read more

Below we cover the main competition law developments in Spain in 2023, concerning (i) institutions and legislation, (ii) antitrust, (iii) mergers, and (iv) State aid. The selection, as usual with these lists, is partly subjective.   Institutions and Legislation Royal Decree-Law 5/2023 Reforms the Spanish Competition Law On 29 June 2023, Royal Decree-Law 5/2023 approving a series of reforms to the Spanish Competition Act was published. The main amendments introduced by the reform were the following: Changes to the time limits in procedures before the CNMC. In merger control proceedings, th ..read more

INTRODUCTION On 24 January 2024, the European Commission (“Commission”) unveiled its proposals to reform the current EU Foreign Direct Investment Screening Regulation 2019/452 (“FDI Screening Regulation”). This forms part of a wider package of five initiatives to strengthen economic security in the EU following the “growing geopolitical tensions and profound technological shifts”.[1] Factors such as the desire to protect critical industries and infrastructure, cybersecurity threats and other geopolitical concerns have resulted in the global proliferation of foreign direct i ..read more

The year 2023 was an eventful year from a Swiss Competition perspective. With the merger of the two Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse in March 2023, the Swiss financial market and Swiss merger control were immediately in the news around the world. However, there were also other important competition law developments in 2023. Namely, the Federal Administrative Court (“FAC“) issued several decisions in a major bid-rigging case in the construction industry and ruled on an abuse case involving exclusive sports rights. On the legislator side, the Swiss government pushed ahead with its Draft Legisla ..read more

In 2023, almost all economic sectors were impacted by the public enforcement of competition law of the Italian Competition Authority (“ICA”) and by judgments of Italian courts. As for previous years, we will summarise below the cases that we deem the most noteworthy, without any aspiration of being exhaustive, starting from the organizational and legal framework.   A revamped ICA At the beginning of 2023, the ICA adopted a new organizational structure, which notably entailed the establishment of two separate departments entrusted with enforcement responsibilities in antitrust matters (in ..read more

Introduction There has always been a thin line between legitimate market research and potentially anticompetitive information exchanges. Caselaw on such matters is of a particular importance. On 01 January 2023, a preliminary inquiry into several undertakings active in the light and medium class and heavy commercial vehicles market[1] was initiated to determine whether these undertakings had violated Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition (“Turkish Competition Law”) (the equivalent of Article 101 TFEU) via exchange of information. Following a preliminary inquiry, the Turkis ..read more