Introduction
On December 9, 2021, the Commission published its Draft Guidelines on the application of EU competition law to collective agreements regarding working conditions of solo self-employed people (the “Draft Guidelines”).[1] The Draft Guidelines, along with a proposal for a directive[2] and a communication,[3] form part of a broader package aimed at improving the working conditions of persons operating on digital labor platforms.[4]
On December 9, 2021, the French Competition Authority (the “FCA”) imposed a €100,000 fine on Mayotte Channel Gateway (“MCG”), the manager and operator of the Longoni port in Mayotte, together with its parent company, Société Nel Import Export, for refusal to comply with an FCA request for information.
On December 7, 2021, the Commission, the United States Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) published a Joint Statement establishing the EU-U.S. Joint Technology Competition Policy Dialogue (the “Policy Dialogue”).
On 6 December 2021, the CAT published a ruling on permission to appeal and costs, following its earlier judgement that refused to strike out collective proceedings brought by Mr. Justin Gutmann against London & South Eastern Railway and South Western Trains, Stagecoach South Western Trains.
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In a ruling dated December 2, 2021, the Paris Court of Appeals overturned a 2010 decision in which the French Competition Authority (the “FCA”) had fined 11 major French banks for colluding on check handling fees, possibly bringing the 11-year saga to an end. The ruling confirms that the concept of by-object restriction should be interpreted restrictively, in line with a judgment issued by the French Cour de cassation in the same case in 2020.
On 26 November 2021, the CAT ruled on eight sets of proceedings associated with the Mastercard or Visa payment cards schemes. The card schemes are alleged to have set multilateral interchange fees (MIFs) for their schemes at anticompetitive levels and therefore infringed Article 101 and/or 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the Chapter 1 and/or 2 Prohibition of the Competition Act 1998.
On November 24, 2021, the Paris Court of Appeals overruled the Paris Commercial Court’s dismissal of the follow-on damage claim brought by two supermarket chains in the dairy products case.[1] The Court of Appeals considered that the applicants had sufficiently substantiated the economic assessment of their harm. It also considered that they had only partially passed on the additional costs and therefore could claim damages for the costs that had not been passed on to consumers.
On November 22, 2021, the Regional Administrative Court of Latium (the “TAR Lazio”) rejected the application for annulment, lodged by the Italian Consortium for the Collection, Recycling and Recovery of Plastic Packaging (“COREPLA”), against the decision by which the ICA fined COREPLA in an amount in excess of €27 million, under Article 102 TFEU, for abusing its dominance in the Italian market for plastic waste recycling services (the “Decision”).[1]