Blogpost 8/2024 AG Kokott recently gave her Opinion on the ongoing saga between the European Commission and Google. She advised the Court to dismiss all of Google’s grounds of appeal against the judgment of the General Court which upheld the Commission’s decision to fine Google €2.4 billion. In her Opinion, AG Kokott raises and answers questions that ‘are of great legal and practical importance’ (para 2). In particular, the AG considers ‘self-preferencing’, ie. where a dominant firm favours its services over those of rivals, to be an independent form of abuse. This means this type of prohibite ..read more

Blogpost 30/2023 Competition authorities can identify a violation of the data protection rules when such a finding is necessary to establish an abuse of dominance under the competition rules. This is the main outcome of the judgment that the Court delivered in Meta Platforms on 4 July 2023. The judgment is the next step in the saga that started with the 2019 competition decision of the Bundeskartellamt (the German Federal Cartel Office) requiring Facebook (now Meta) to refrain from combining user data from different sources beyond its social network. The judgment provides a welcome confirmatio ..read more

Blogpost 10/2023 Esports (short for: ‘electronic sports’) have emerged as a major player in the entertainment industry, attracting billions of euros in revenue and a massive global audience. Now that big tech companies have started to establish themselves in the industry, the legal landscape of esports is also becoming increasingly important, especially with regards to the antitrust aspects. Competition law plays a critical role in market regulation and protecting consumer welfare, but its applicability to the unique characteristics of esports is a subject of debate. The purpose of this blog i ..read more

Blogpost 1/2023 I’ll be honest: I don’t like football. I think it is overcommercialised, involves way too much money and an excessive amount of public resources and the competition on the pitch has precious little to do with athletes trying to outcompete another (I’ve always liked rowing better). With that out of the way, we can now move on to discuss the recent opinion by Advocate General Rantos in Superleague. The facts leading to Superleague are clear and widely known. A number of high-ranking football clubs sought to create their own league, the Superleague. This would allow these founding ..read more

In 2009, the European Commission imposed what was then a record-breaking fine of EUR 1.06 billion on Intel for abuse of dominance. Intel’s initial action for annulment was dismissed by the General Court (GC) of the EU in its 2014 judgment, but Intel’s appeal succeeded before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which annulled the GC’s judgment and referred it back to the GC in 2017. The ECJ ordered the GC to do a complete and detailed judicial review of the various pieces of economic evidence used by the Commission to prove the infringement and submitted by Intel to rebut it. On 26 January 202 ..read more

On 15 December 2020, the European Commission presented its ambitious Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Those Acts, which at this stage are only legislative proposals for future EU Regulations (see on the ‘actification’ of the EU legislative process, here), constitute a major step forward in the regulation of digital markets in the European Union (EU). The DMA is particularly unique and important as it sets up an ex ante regulatory framework complementary to, yet also fundamentally different from, existing EU competition law provisions. If adopted, it would contribute significantly ..read more

On 30 April 2020 the European Commission published its Statement of Objections (‘SO’) against Apple, claiming that the tech giant has abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through its App Store, in a move which highlights the potential of competition policy to be used as a tool for digital sovereignty and which raises questions about the future of competition law enforcement in the European Union as well as the goals of competition policy in the digital age.  Competition policy has been mooted as a potential tool to address challenges as d ..read more

Introduction Aspen, one of the biggest pharmaceuticals giants, came into limelight when it acquired cancer treating drugs after their patent expired in 2009. The drugs were useful for the treatment of leukaemia, hematologic tumours etc. Across the European Economic Area, it is sold under different brand names and it is an extremely popular and important drug in treating these deadly diseases. Usually the price of the medicines falls significantly after they go off patent. The reason for this is that in the EU, national authorities of Member States can adopt pricing and reimbursement rules for ..read more

Last summer’s CJEU judgment in Case C-262/18 P Dovera Zdravotna Poist’ovna has gone by quite unnoticed with only a few mentions and annotations in the usual blogs and journals. However, this judgment – which concerned a State aid question in the context of Slovakian supplementary health insurance – is significant for the interaction of EU competition law (specifically State aid law) with social protection and social security law. Since the AG2R Prévoyance judgment, it was generally assumed that supplementary insurance schemes involving a (partially) compulsory affiliation fall within the scope ..read more

In this era of digitisation, pricing strategies are amongst business approaches that have been revolutionised. Critical business decisions have shifted into the ‘hands’ of computers, via pricing algorithms (PA). Exponential growth in data use and collection, combined with the rising commonality of PA, has resulted in extraordinary levels of market transparency. Ultimately, this may benefit consumers, enabling informed purchase decisions whilst facilitating easier switching. However, these seemingly pro-competitive consequences represent only one side of the ‘double-edged sword’. This blog will ..read more