Overview   EU countries

The Commission takes note of today’s judgment of the General Court dismissing Bategu’s action for annulment against a Commission decision adopted on 15 Februrary 2023 reject-ing a complaint.
In its decision, the Commission had rejected Bategu’s claims that rolling stock original equipment manufacturers coordinated their behaviour with the purpose of boycotting Bategu’s products and delaying the implementation of European fire protection standard EN 45545-2. The Commission also rejected the claim that the original equipment manufacturers abused their collective dominant position to do the same.

The European Commission takes note of today’s judgment by the General Court related to Intel’s appeal against a 2023 Commission antitrust decision. In its 2023 decision, the Commission re-imposed a fine of around €376.36 million on Intel for a previously established abuse of dominant position in the market for computer chips called x86 central processing units (‘CPUs').
In its judgment, the General Court upheld the Commission’s 2023 decision, confirmed the Commission’s competence to reimpose a fine on Intel for the previously established infringement, but reduced the amount of the fine.
The Commission will carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of today’s preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice in Case C 2/23.
In particular, the Court held that EU law does not preclude mechanisms for administrative assistance that would require a national competition authority to transmit its files, including leniency statements and settlement submissions and the information obtained from them, to the national criminal authorities, upon request, provided that such mechanisms do not jeopardize the effectiveness of leniency programs and settlement procedures as tools to detect and establish competition law infringements.
The Court however clarified that once leniency statements and settlement submissions end up in criminal files, pursuant to Article 31(3) of the ECN+ Directive, access to these statements and submissions can only be granted to persons under investigation for the purposes of exercising their rights of defence, in particular where complaints against those persons are based on information contained therein. Access cannot be granted to other parties, in particular injured parties who seek compensation for the harm caused by the competition law infringement. The Court further clarified that this access limitation does not extend to documents and information provided in order to explain, specify in detail and prove the content of leniency statements or settlement submissions.
Today’s preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice importantly clarifies the scope of the protection afforded by Union competition law to leniency statements and settlement submissions. It contributes to the protection of leniency programmes which are a key tool for the effective enforcement of competition law, while allowing for administrative assistance between national law enforcement and regulatory authorities and guaranteeing the rights of defence of defendants in proceedings that do not relate to the enforcement of competition law.

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissing Teva’s and Cephalon’s appeal against the 2023 judgment of the General Court. In its 2023 judgment, the General Court dismissed an action for annulment against a 2020 Commission decision.
In its 2020 decision, the Commission imposed a total fine of around €60.5 million on Teva and Cephalon for agreeing to delay the market entry of a generic version of Cephalon's drug for sleep disorders, modafinil, after Cephalon's main patent had expired.
Today’s judgment by the Court of Justice ultimately upholds the Commission’s 2020 decision.

The judgment clarifies that access to judicial review by a national court against breaches of EU public policy must be available to EU sport actors that are subject to FIFA’s unilaterally imposed system of dispute settlement.
In particular, the Court of Justice clarified that effective judicial review to national courts of EU Member States on whether arbitral awards comply with principles and provisions that are a matter of EU public policy, such as EU competition law and EU freedoms of movement, must be possible. National courts must review the interpretation of those principles and provisions, the legal consequences attached to them in a given case as well as the legal classification of the facts as established by the arbitration body and must have the possibility to make a reference to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling.
Effective judicial protection also requires that national courts are able to find that an infringement of EU competition law or EU freedoms of movement exists, to bring to an end the conduct amounting to that infringement, to order damages for the harm caused and, where appropriate, to order interim relief.
The judgment clarifies that EU law does not permit a national law to automatically treat an arbitration decision as binding or to confer on it probative value if that decision was reviewed by a court in a non-EU country, and that court cannot ask the CJEU for a preliminary ruling.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the General Court in relation to the Commission’s decision of 2 December 2021 that imposed a fine on Credit Suisse, now UBS, for its participation in 2012 in one of the Forex cartels ( AT.40135).
The Court fully confirmed that Credit Suisse participated in the cartel and rejected all pleas in that regard, but reduced the amount of the fine from EUR 83 million to EUR 29 million, on the basis that the Commission should have taken into account alternative data for such calculation.
The judgment only concerns the participation in the cartel by, and the fine imposed on, Credit Suisse. All other banks settled their case with the European Commission.
The Commission will carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union upholding the 2023 judgments of the General Court. In its judgments, the General Court upheld a 2019 Commission's decision approving, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of certain E.ON power generation assets by RWE.
In its judgments, the Court of Justice confirmed that the Commission was correct in assessing the different parts of the asset swap as two separate concentrations.
Furthermore, the Court of Justice confirmed that the analytical framework applied by the Commission was sufficiently and adequately explained.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgment by the General Court upholding a 2021 Commission decision. In its decision, the Commission found that Bank of America, Natixis, Nomura, RBS (now NatWest), UBS, UniCredit and WestLB (now Portigon) breached EU antitrust rules through the participation of a group of traders in a cartel in the primary and secondary market for European Government Bonds (‘EGB').
In its judgment, the General Court found that the Commission had a legitimate interest to address the decision to all cartelists, irrespective of whether they were subject to fines. In addition, it largely upheld the amount of the fines imposed by the Commission, with the exception of those imposed on Nomura and UniCredit, which the General Court slightly reduced.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of today’s preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in case Alphabet and Others (C-233/23) clarifying the interpretation of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’).
In particular, the Court clarified that, where a dominant company has developed a digital platform intended for use by third parties, it may constitute an abuse of dominant position to refuse to grant interoperability between that platform and a third-party app. The Court has also emphasised that this refusal can be an abuse even if access to that platform is not indispensable for the commercial operation of the third-party app, but is such as to make that app more attractive to consumers.
Furthermore, the Court clarified that the fact that the third-party app and other competitors remained on the market or even grew their position despite not having access to the dominant company’s platform does not mean that the refusal of interoperability did not have anti-competitive effects and was therefore not abusive. Such refusal can still be considered abusive if it has the potential to hinder competition on the market.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of today’s preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice in the Athenian Brewery Case (C-393/23). The case concerns the question whether a person claiming to have been harmed by an infringement of EU competition law can sue the company which committed that infringement at the seat of the parent company in another Member State jointly with that parent company.
The judgment clarifies that a parent company and its subsidiary can be jointly sued at the place where one of them is domiciled if the parent company exercises decisive influence on the economic activity of the subsidiary.
Where the parent company holds all or almost all the shares in the capital of its subsidiary, a presumption applies that it exercises such decisive influence over the subsidiary.

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the General Court in case T-561/21 rejecting HSBC’s appeal against a 2021 Commission’s decision. In 2021, the Commission re-adopted a prohibition decision against HSBC, following the 2019 partial annulment by the General Court of the previous Commission’s decision in the euro interest rate derivatives cartel case of 2016, on the basis that the Commission had failed adequately to explain part of the methodology used for calculating the fines imposed. In its 2021 decision, the Commission explained in further detail how the fine was calculated and slightly reduced the fine amount previously imposed on the company.
In its judgment, the General Court upheld the Commission’s assessment and decision of 2021.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the General Court in Cases T-386/21 - Crédit Agricole and T-406/21 – UBS (formerly Credit Suisse), rejecting their appeals against a 2021 Commission’s decision. In its 2021 decision, the Commission found that Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank had participated in a cartel for trading Supra-sovereign, Sovereign and Agency (SSA) bonds denominated in US Dollars on, the secondary market in the European Economic Area (EEA).
In its judgment, the General Court upheld the Commission’s assessment and decision. In particular, it confirmed that the type of exchanges between financial traders as outlined in the Commission’s decision constitute a restriction of competition by object. The General Court also upheld the methodology used by the Commission for the calculation of the fines imposed on the banks.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In its judgment, the Court of Justice rejected the Commission’s appeal against the ruling of the General Court of 26 January 2022. In its ruling, the General Court partially annulled a 2009 Commission's decision.
In its 2009 decision, the Commission found that Intel had engaged in two specific forms of illegal practices by: (i) giving wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all, or almost all, their x86 central processing units (‘CPUs') from Intel (so-called ‘conditional rebates'); and (ii) paying computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing competitors' x86 CPUs and to limit the sales channels available to these products (so-called 'naked restrictions').
After the General Court had first upheld the entirety of the Commission decision in 2014, the Court of Justice, upon appeal by Intel, annulled in 2019 the 2014 General Court ruling as regards the conditional rebates, and sent back this part of the decision for review by the General Court.
In its 2022 judgment, the General Court annulled the Commission's finding related to Intel's conditional rebates practice. At the same time, the General Court confirmed that Intel's naked restrictions amounted to an abuse of dominant market position under EU competition rules.
The Commission appealed the part of the 2022 judgment of the General Court concerning Intel’s conditional rebates. Therefore, today’s judgment concerns only those. On the other hand, given that the part of the 2022 General Court judgment concerning the naked restrictions has not been appealed by Intel, it has become final.
We will carefully analyse the judgment by the Court of Justice.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union upholding the 2019 Commission’s decision that prohibited the creation of a joint venture by Tata Steel and ThyssenKrupp under the EU Merger Regulation (‘EUMR’).
With this judgment, the Court of Justice upholds a “gap case” prohibition under the EUMR, meaning a case where the merger is found to lead to a significant impediment to effective competition despite the fact that the merged entity is not found to be dominant in the relevant market. The Court thus confirms the Commission’s framework of review to examining potential anticompetitive effects stemming from mergers between close but non-dominant competitors.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union clarifying that certain FIFA transfer rules governing contractual relations between football players and clubs in situations of termination ‘without just cause’ of the employment with the former club constitute a restriction of the free movement of workers under Article 45 TFEU and, subject to verification by the referring court, are unlikely to be justified.
The Court also found these rules to restrict competition by object under Article 101(1) TFEU. As regards a justification under Article 101(3), the Court noted that, subject to verification by the referring court, these rules do not appear to be indispensable or necessary.
It will now be for the referring court (Mons court of appeals) to verify whether the restrictions of the free movement of workers and competition are justified.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgments of the General Court. In its judgments, the General Court dismissed the parties’ actions against a 2022 Commission settlement decision imposing a total fine of €31.5 million on two producers of metal packaging for participating in a cartel.
Today’s judgment brings further clarity on the nature of the principles for case allocation and re-allocation between a Member State’s National Competition Authority and the European Commission, as included in the Commission Notice on cooperation within the Network of Competition Authorities.
See also Silgan Holdings and Others v Commission.

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the General Court. In its judgment, the General Court upheld Google’s application for the annulment of the 2019 Commission’s decision in the Google AdSense case.
The Commission will carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the General Court. In its judgment, the General Court dismissed Qualcomm’s action for annulment of a 2019 Commission decision imposing a fine of €242 million on Qualcomm for predatory pricing.
In its judgment, the General Court fully upheld all of the substantive findings in the Commission’s decision, but partly accepted Qualcomm’s plea concerning the calculation of the amount of the fine, which results in a minor reduction of the fine by approximately €3.5 million.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union which upholds the Commission's Google Shopping Decision. In that Decision, the Commission found that Google favoured, within its general search results, its own comparison-shopping service “Google Shopping”, over those services provided by its rivals.
The Court of Justice confirms that, in certain circumstances, the favourable treatment of its own services by a dominant company can be a breach of Article 102 TFEU.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format), as well as the remarks by Executive Vice-President Vestager.

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union setting aside the judgment of the General Court of the European Union of 13 July 2022, Illumina v Commission (T-227/21). Today’s judgement also annuls the European Commission’s decision of 19 April 2021, accepting the request of the French Competition Authority to examine the concentration relating to the acquisition by Illumina Inc. of sole control over Grail LLC; and annuls the Commission decisions accepting the requests of the Greek, Belgian, Norwegian, Icelandic and Dutch competition authorities to join that referral request.
The Commission will carefully study the judgment and its implications and will reflect on possible next steps.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format), as well as the statement by Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager.