Introduction and background On 8 February 2024, the European Commission (the “Commission”) adopted a revised Market Definition Notice (the “Notice”). Defining a relevant market is a necessary step when assessing the market power of an undertaking in merger control and antitrust cases. This provides...
On 20 December 2023, the Swedish Competition Authority (“SCA”) issued a decision against a manufacturer of kitchen and bathroom faucets and showers for having fixed the prices and terms for the online resale of its products, i.e. resale price maintenance (“RPM”). The fine of MSEK 16.9 (approximately...
Following two sector inquiries the Swedish Competition Authority (the SCA) announced in October last year that it considered the existing competition rules to be inadequate and not sufficient to ensure competitive and well-functioning markets in Sweden. The SCA therefore requested new and more flexi...
Competition law and State Aid rules are more often than you might think related to the world of professional sports. And now the spotlight has turned to another field of EU law. On 12 August 2023, La Liga, the national professional football league in Spain, announced in a press release that it has l...
On 4 July 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered a Grand Chamber ruling affirming the national competition authorities’ power to investigate privacy breaches when conducting abuse of dominance investigations under Article 102 TFEU. Big tech firms will now have extra incentives to...
On 29 June 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered a preliminary ruling in the Super Bock case on the legality of resale price maintenance in distribution agreements. It appears that the last bastion of the ‘formalistic approach’ once adopted by the EU Courts has now fallen. In it...
A New Approach for Assessing Alleged Abuse of a Dominant Position under Article 102 TFEU? On 27 March this year the European Commission launched a Call for Evidence seeking feedback on the intended adoption of Guidelines on exclusionary abuses of dominance, prohibited by Article 102 TFEU. Exclusiona...
Increased competition law scrutiny has recently entered the employment arena. Thus, it is important to be aware that agreements between employers to fix wages or not to recruit staff (so-called no-poach agreements) could result in high fines, damages claims, exclusion from public procurements and ba...
In this blog post, we take a closer look at the merger control year of 2022 in Sweden and the cases that caught the Swedish Competition Authority’s (“SCA”) attention. 2022 in numbers In 2022, the SCA received 117 merger filings. While this was a slight decrease compared to the record breaking 135 no...
On 6 February 2023, the European Commission (the Commission) published a Draft Implementing Regulation for the application of the Regulation on Foreign Subsidies (FSR). The FSR, which entered into force on 12 January 2023, allows the Commission to screen non-EU government subsidies. The FSR requires...
In a recent preliminary ruling regarding Unilever, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) reaffirms the position taken in Intel, declaring that a national competition authority (NCA) cannot disregard claims that an exclusivity scheme is incapable of producing anticompetitive effects. The e...
In the context of the common agricultural policy reform for 2023-2027, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted in 2021 a new exclusion from the EU competition rules for agricultural products. The Commission has now published a draft proposal for sustainability agreement...