Competition Weekly e-news

On 29 March 2022, the European Commission carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of several companies in Germany active in the supply, transmission and storage of natural gas.

The European Commission has partially referred the proposed acquisition of a part of McKesson by Phoenix to the French competition authority (‘Autorité de la concurrence'), at its request. The Commission has approved unconditionally, under the EU Merger Regulation, the proposed transaction outside France. The Commission concluded that the transaction would raise no competition concerns in other markets in the European Economic Area.

The Commission takes note of the judgments of the General Court dismissing most of the actions brought by air cargo carriers against a 2017 Commission decision. In its 2017 decision, the Commission imposed a total fine of nearly €800 million on 11 air cargo carriers for operating a price-fixing cartel in the airfreight services market.
In its judgments, the General Court largely confirmed the Commission's assessment and decision as well as its jurisdiction to prosecute international cartels.
The Commission also takes note of the General Court’s decision to reduce the amount of the fine imposed on Japan Airlines, Air Canada, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, SAS and LAN. Overall, the fine was decreased by about €45 million.
See also:

• Curia's press release (in pdf format)
• Full text of judgments T-323/17, T-324/17, T-325/17, T-326/17, T-334/17, T-337/17, T-338/17, T-340/17, T-341/17, T-342/17, T-343/17, T-344/17 and T-350/17

Speech by Executive Vice-President Vestager,
CRA annual conference, Brussels,
31 March 2022.
[...] "Because being challenged is fully in the spirit of what competition law is about. And it is in that spirit, I'm announcing today that in the coming months we are going to launch an evaluation of Regulation 1/2003, the central plank of our antitrust enforcement framework." [...]