Kluwer Competition Law Blog

One of the inevitable facts of life in the U.S. after a government antitrust investigation becomes public – especially if it is a cartel investigation with an amnesty applicant or guilty pleas – is customer class actions. U.S. class action plaintiffs’ lawyers frequently bring “follow-on” cases on behalf of purchasers of the affected products within days (or at least weeks) of public disclosure of a cartel or other antitrust investigation. It is often the case, however, that the immediate purchasers of the allegedly price-fixed products (or monopolized products, as the case may be) are major distributors or wholesalers of the products, not consumers. Under the U.S. Supreme Court [...]

On March 11, 2010, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the “ECJ”) rendered a judgment (preliminary ruling) in response to two State aid questions referred to it by the French Conseil d’État (France’s highest administrative Court). The case involves French book and media exporter Centre d’exportation du livre français (CELF), which received non-notified State aid from the French government between 1980 and 2002 to offset the extra costs of handling small orders placed by booksellers established outside France. [Judgement of March 11, 2010] Case C-1/09, Centre d’exportation du livre français (CELF) and others v. Société internationale de diffusion et d’édition (SI [...]

A case involving Google confirms that the French Competition Authority is keen on using a combination of interim measures and commitment proceedings in order help it quickly resolve maters which it perceives as competition issues. This may remain a specific feature of the French system however: having regard to the very demanding standard of proof imposed on the Commission before it can grant interim measures, it would be difficult to replicate this powerful regulatory tool at the EU level for instance.
The case at hand concerns the content policy of Google’s famous AdWords service. As many readers will know, the object of AdWords is to sell online advertising space on Google. Advertise [...]

On 6 July 2010, the General Court rejected Ryanair’s appeal against the Commission’s 2007 prohibition of its hostile take-over of rival Irish airline Aer Lingus. On the same day, the Court also issued a much shorter judgment in Case T-411/07, and rejected an Aer Lingus appeal against a Commission decision, which refused to order Ryanair to sell down its minority interest in Aer Lingus.

The legal basis for Aer Lingus’ request was Article 8(4)/(5) of the EU Merger Regulation, which allow the Commission to take measures (including interim measures) in cases where a concentration has been declared incompatible with the common market but has already been implemented.

The Commission decided t [...]

The FCO issued three cartel decisions in June 2010: it imposed a (second) fine on coffee roasters on June 9 (€ 30 million), on manufacturers of ophthalmic lenses on June 10 (€ 115 million), and on a manufacturer of cable fillings on June 24 (€0.4 million). All of these decisions involved settlements (and the ophthalmic lenses case seems to be a “hybrid” settlement, i.e., not all addressees settled). This is in line with the increasing trend of settlements in Germany.

The FCO has been terminating cartel cases through settlements since 2008 (while the Commission only recently issued the first settlement decision in May 2010). The FCO’s settlement proceedings are faster than at C [...]

Some statistics to feed the debate on the checks and balances of the EU antitrust enforcement system: any comments? 
(click on “read more” to get the formatting right)

*  All those decisions were re-adopted by the Commission subsequently, with fines.

*  One judgment led to a significant reduc [...]