Sweden is one of the few EU Member States which does not have a stand-alone foreign direct investment (“FDI”) regime. This is about to change. On 16 March 2023, the Swedish Government presented a draft legislative bill on foreign direct investments (the FDI Act). The FDI Act, which is suggested to e...
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...
In Sweden, review of public procurement’s is rather frequent compared to many other Member States. In 2020, more than 3,500 applications for review of public procurement’s were filed with the Swedish administrative courts according to statistics from the Swedish Competition Authority. Re...
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...
The Swedish Government has recently adopted a Governmental Bill with a proposal of how the European Accessibility Directive, adopted in 2019, is to be transposed into Swedish law. The new rules require that certain key products, such as computers, smartphones, ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines,...
The Swedish courts have not been on the forefront when it comes to requesting preliminary rulings – despite a rather obvious need for such rulings in many cases where claims from one or both parties have been denied by the courts. The unwillingness to seek guidance from the Court of Justice of the E...
At the turn of the year, Sweden will take over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Institutional and legislative responsibility is shouldered at a time characterised by war and economic crisis. The Swedish Precidency Program The presidency program, including the p...
The Court of Justice of the European Union (the “ECJ”) and the General Court in Luxembourg have a very important role to play as the interpreters of EU law. To ensure consistency in the application of EU law throughout the Union, national courts in the EU Member States may request so-called prelimin...
On 1 December 2022 the Swedish Competition Authority (the “SCA”) adopted a decision finding that the prohibition against anticompetitive agreements had been infringed by two undertakings in the sanitation sector. This marks the second time that the SCA has used its recently granted power to impose c...
The Illumina/Grail saga is turning into a nightmare for the US biotech company Illumina. On 5 December 2022, it received a statement of objections (SO) from the European Commission (the EC) setting out the restorative measures to be taken by Illumina to unwind the acquisition of the US biotech start...