Clifford Chance
Major EU Competition Law Developments and Policy Issues
24 November 2011
Ruling in more than 70 cartel appeals, the General Court has left its mark on EU competition law in 2011 as much as the Commission has. The attached annual review was presented at the GCR 2011 Competition Law Review Conference in Brussels on 15 November 2011 and provides a detailed analysis of the most significant EU cases relating to anti-competitive agreements, abuses of dominance and merger control.
The major developments discussed in this paper occurred over the past 12 months and include:
- The Commission's cartel fines in 2011 totalled €453 million, compared to €2.9 billion during the previous year;
- The General Court issued judgments in 72 appeals concerning 11 cartels;
- The ECHR's Menarini judgment and its implications for judicial review and the fundamental right to a fair trial in competition proceedings;
- The Commission's Telekom Polska decision finding abuse of dominance, as well as the Commission's market testing of commitments offered by IBM, and new complainants in the Google investigation;
- The CJEU's judgment in Telia Sonera clarifying the law on margin squeezes and the applicability of the 'as efficient competitor' test;
- The Commission's high-profile prohibition of the Olympic/Aegean merger;
- Article 22 referrals in three mergers, interface commitments in Intel/McAfee, application of the priority rule in Seagate/Samsung and Western Digital/Hitachi, and new questions arising from mergers involving Chinese state-owned enterprises;
- The General Court's judgment in E.ON, upholding a €38million fine for breach of a seal, and the Commission's fine of €8 million for breach of a seal imposed on Suez Environnement;
- The new Horizontal Guidelines and Block Exemptions, as well as the Commission's published Best Practices.
