Energy, Chemicals & Infrastructure

In a significant judgment rendered on July 13, 2022 (“Judgment”), the EU’s General Court validated the position taken by the European Commission (“EC”) in a March 2021 Guidance Paper encouraging national competition authorities (“NCAs”) to use Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation (“EUMR”) to refer transactions to the EC that do not meet national merger control thresholds, but which they believe may threaten to significantly affect competition within the EU.

On 30 June 2022, the EU institutions reached political agreement on a new regulation which will allow the European Commission to control non-EU government subsidies given to businesses active in the EU (the “Regulation”).

On July 7, 2022, Advocate General Rantos delivered his Opinion in Lietuvos geležinkeliai v Commission, Lithuanian Railways’ appeal against a General Court judgment partially upholding a decision by the Commission finding that it had infringed Article 102 TFEU by removing 19 km of train tracks.[1] The Commission concluded that this conduct prevented a major customer from switching to Latvian Railways’ rival transportation services.

On July 6, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) published its annual report for the year 2021.[1] In particular, the report highlights (i) the key figures of the FCA activity in 2021, (ii) the reinforced investigative powers of the FCA and (iii) the roadmap for 2022-2023.

In her second term as EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager’s focus to date has been on securing approval for the