The Commission takes note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which confirms the 2018 Commission decision against Gazprom. In its decision, the Commission imposed legally binding commitments on Gazprom to address the competition concerns identified in the context of its antitrust investigation into Gazprom’s practices in Central and Easter European gas markets.
Today’s judgment fully upholds the Commission’s assessment and decision. It also provides useful clarifications about the Commission’s procedure leading to the adoption of commitments decision pursuant to Article 9 of Regulation (EC) No 1/2003, as well as the interplay between competition law and other Treaty objectives.

The Commission takes note of today’s judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, upholding in full a 2019 Commission decision. In its decision, the Commission had found that JCDecaux Street Furniture Belgium received incompatible aid in the form of tax and royalty exemptions for the occupation of the public domain, by continuing the use of certain advertising panels in the City of Brussels beyond the foreseen date of removal. The Commission had therefore ordered Belgium to recover the incompatible aid, plus interest.

The Commission takes note of today’s preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Booking.com Germany case (C 264/23).
In its judgment, the Court indicated that parity clauses in agreements between online hotel reservation platforms and providers of accommodation services online are not ancillary to those agreements. Therefore, they do not fall outside the scope of Article 101 TFEU, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements.
Today’s preliminary ruling also provides guidance on defining the relevant market in the context of online hotel reservation platforms for the purpose of applying EU legislation.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of today's judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union annulling the General Court’s judgement of 2022 and the Commission decision of 2019. In its decision, the Commission had found that part of the UK’s Controlled Foreign Company (CFC) legislation, which included a special derogation rule for certain financing income of multinational groups active in the UK (the ‘Group Financing Exemption’), constituted unlawful and incompatible State aid.
The Commission will carefully study the judgment and assess its implications.
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 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 today's preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice according to which, pursuant to Article 108(3) TFEU, where a VAT exemption enjoyed by certain par-ties constitutes unlawful State aid, a party who has not benefited from such an exemption cannot receive, in the form of damages, an amount equivalent to the VAT paid.
In light of that conclusion, the Court of Justice considered unnecessary to answer the ques-tion as to whether the VAT exemption at stake in the national proceedings, enjoyed by cer-tain gambling operators, constituted State aid.
The Commission will study the judgment and assess its possible implications for its case practice.

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 Court of Justice's judgment confirming the Commission’s decision of 30 August 2016 finding that Ireland granted unlawful State aid to Apple through selective tax breaks, which Ireland now has to recover.
The Court of Justice confirmed the Commission's approach that the intellectual property licences held by Apple's Irish subsidiaries and related profits should have been allocated to the Irish branches. And that Apple should have paid taxes worth 13 billion euros on all related profits in Ireland.
This means that the recovered taxes, which have been in an escrow account for quite some years in Ireland during the ongoing court proceedings, now must be released to the Irish State.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format), as well as the remarks by Executive Vice-President Vestager.

The Commission takes note of today’s judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, which upholds the judgment of the General Court relating to a Commission decision of April 2020. In its decision, the Commission had found that four alleged State aid measures granted in favour of Lekarna Ljubljana constituted either no aid or existing aid. Today, the Court of Justice confirmed the General Court’s finding that the Commission should have had doubts that assets granted by Slovenia to Lekarna Ljubljana involved State aid, with the result that the Commission should have opened the formal investigation procedure regarding this measure.
The Commission will carefully assess the judgment.

The Commission takes note of today’s judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, which dismissed an appeal against the judgment of the General Court of February 2023. In its judgment, the General Court had rejected an application by a complainant seeking to annul a Commission letter rejecting the complaint. The Commission had considered the complainant not to be an interested party entitled to lodge a State aid complaint with the Commission.
In today’s judgment, the Court of Justice confirmed that finding. In particular, the Court confirmed that the applicant did not sufficiently demonstrate that he is an interested party.

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the General Court. In its judgment, the Court dismissed Conserve Italia’s appeal against a 2021 Commission decision imposing a fine of EUR 20 million on Conserve Italia for participating in a cartel in the canned vegetables sector.
In its judgment, the General Court fully upheld the Commission assessment and decision.

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.

The Commission takes note of today’s judgement of the General Court. With this ruling, the Court confirmed the Commission's decision to designate ByteDance as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act with respect to its TikTok online social networking service.
The Commission will now carefully study the judgement.
We will continue working with ByteDance, like all other gatekeepers, to ensure full compliance with the Digital Markets Act.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of today´s judgment. The judgment clarifies that a combined reading of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (‘TFEU’) and Regulation 1393/2007 on the service in the Member States of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil or commercial matters (‘Service of Documents Regulation’) precludes a parent company, which is the subject of an antitrust damages action, from being validly summoned to appear before court when the documents instituting the proceedings have been served at the address of its subsidiary domiciled in another Member State in which the action was brought, even if the parent company and its subsidiary form a single economic unit.

The Commission takes note of today’s judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, confirming the General Court findings in the ZFM State aid case (T95/21), therefore upholding in full the 2020 Commission Decision in this case. In its decision, the Commission 2007 and 2013 State aid decisions.
This judgment is consistent with the previous findings of the General Court which were made in this case and in several other appeal cases brought against the Commission’s 2020 decision by the region of Madeira (T-131/21) and by some beneficiaries, which were dismissed by the General Court in 2023.

The Commission takes note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union rejecting the WDI’s appeal against the judgment of the General Court of 23 November 2022 in case T-275/20 WDI and Others v Commission.
By dismissing WDI’s appeal in its entirety, the Court of Justice confirms the finding by the General Court that the Courts’ jurisdiction in respect to competition fines is limited to the fine originally imposed by the Commission. So the fine set by the Union Courts does not constitute a new fine which is legally distinct from that imposed by the Commission.

The Commission takes note of the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union upholding the Commission’s appeal against a 2018 judgment of the General Court. In 2018, the General Court annulled parts of a 2014 Commission decision. In its 2014 decision, the Commission imposed fines totalling €427 million on Servier and five generic companies for curbing entry of cheaper versions of a cardiovascular medicine. In particular, the Commission found that all companies entered into restrictive agreements under Article 101 TFEU and that Servier put in place a strategy aimed at systematically buying out any competitive threats that amounted to an abuse of dominant position under Article 102 TFEU.
By upholding the Commission’s appeal, the Court of Justice confirmed most of the Commission’s findings included in the 2014 decision. At the same time, the Court of Justice referred back to the General Court the assessment of certain findings for it to rule on them.
See also Curia's press release (in PDF format).

The Commission takes note of the judgments of the General Court upholding a 2013 Commission’s State aid decision. In its 2013 decision, the Commission concluded that a Spanish scheme for the purchase of ships involving leasing and financing through tax relief to be partly incompatible with EU State aid rules. The Commission found that the scheme conferred a selective advantage on economic interest groupings and their investors over their competitors. It therefore ordered Spain to recover the incompatible aid.
On 2 February 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union largely upheld the Commission decision, while annulling it insofar as it only identified the economic interest groupings and their investors as beneficiaries of the aid.
In today’s judgment, the General Court ruled that the last remaining application for annulment against the Commission’s 2013 decision was without object as regards the question of the identification of the indirect beneficiaries of the scheme and dismissed the remainder of the action for annulment.
The judgment also confirms that the Commission was competent to ask Spain to set aside private contractual clauses which allowed beneficiaries of the aid scheme to shift the burden of recovery to third parties.

The European Commission takes note of today’s judgment of the General Court, upholding a 2020 Commission Decision. In its decision, the Commission had found that the implementation of the Madeira Free Zone aid scheme (Regime III) in Portugal is not in line with the Commission's State aid decisions of 2007 and 2013 approving the scheme. The objective of the approved measure was to contribute to the economic development of the outermost region of Madeira through tax incentives for companies creating jobs in Madeira and for activities effectively and materially performed in that region.
In its judgment, the General Court upholds the Commission’s finding that the tax reductions were applied to companies that have made no real contribution to the development of the region, including on jobs created outside Madeira (and even the EU), in breach of the conditions laid down in the 2007 and 2013 State aid decisions and EU State aid rules.
This judgment is consistent with the previous findings of the General Court in other appeal cases, especially those brought by Portugal (T-95/21) and the region of Madeira (T-131/21), which were both rejected by the General Court in 2022 and 2023.