On June 2, 2025, the Commission fined Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million for a cartel in the online food delivery sector. During Delivery Hero’s non-controlling minority shareholding in Glovo from 2018 to 2022, the parties (1) agreed not to poach each other’s employees; (2) divided national markets among themselves, and (3) exchanged commercially sensitive information.[1]
On March 18, 2025, a legislative proposal was opened for consultation that, if enacted, would enable the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (“ACM”) to “call in” transactions that currently do not meet notification thresholds for merger review.[1] The Proposal follows calls by the ACM for expanded authority and coincides with its first investigation into whether a below-threshold transaction violated antitrust law.
On November 28, 2024, the Commission published the results of an extensive ex-post study examining its past enforcement of merger control rules in the pharmaceutical sector (the “Study”).[1]
On November 9, 2023, Advocate General Pitruzzella delivered his Opinion,[1] proposing that the Court of Justice uphold the appeal brought by the European Commission (“Commission”)[2] against the General Court judgment of July 15, 2020,[3] which annulled the Commission decision of August 30, 2016, finding that the Republic of Ireland (“Ireland”) had granted €13 billion in undue tax benefits to Apple Inc (“Apple”).[4] The Commission had found that Ireland granted a selective advantage to Apple through two individual tax decisions (“tax rulings”[5]) adopted in 1991 and 2007, addressed to the Irish-based subsidiaries, Apple Sales International (“ASI”), and Apple Operations Europe (“AOE”) (together, “the Irish branches”). As AG Pitruzzella pointed out, this case is part of a “series of somewhat extensive cases concerning the application of Article 107(1) TFEU to tax rulings.”[6]