Cases Art.81/82 (ex 85/86) closed by Comfort Letter

The Competition DG has to deal every year with a large number of notifications from parties seeking negative clearance or exemption. The majority of cases (where a formal decision is not justified) are closed, with the parties' agreement, by administrative ("comfort") letter. This is a much simpler and speedier procedure.

Comfort letters are addressed to the parties concerned and are not published. In some cases however a summary of the notification and an indication of the Commission's intention to deal with it by comfort letter is first published in the Official Journal, C series. A full list of cases closed by comfort letter, together with brief summaries of the most important or interesting cases concerned appears in the annual Report on Competition Policy. each year.