Industries

On April 5, 2019, the DCA annulled a €62 million fine that the FCO had imposed on Carlsberg Deutschland GmbH (“Carlsberg”) in 2014 for its participation in price-fixing agreements in 2006 (draught beer) and 2008 (draught and bottled beer) in Germany.[1] In addition to Carlsberg, the FCO had fined ten other breweries, one trade association and 14 individuals in the total amount of €338 million (including Carlsberg’s fine).[2]

On April 5, 2019, the Commission sent a Statement of Objections (“SO”) to Valve, the owner of the video game distribution platform Steam, as well as five video game publishers[1] whose video games are distributed by Valve. The SO sets out the Commission’s concerns that the companies have prevented customers from purchasing PC video games online from sellers in certain Member States in Central and Eastern Europe[2] where prices are lower (so-called “geo-blocking”).

On April 5, 2019, the Commission issued a Statement of Objections (“SO”) to BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen (“VW”) alleging that the car manufacturers conspired to halter the development of clean emissions technology for passenger cars running on petrol and diesel.[1]

On April 4, 2019, the Stuttgart Court of Appeals confirmed the Stuttgart Regional Court’s judgment that found Daimler liable for damages as a result of its participation in the Trucks Cartel.[1] In particular, the Stuttgart Court of Appeals held that the limitation period for damages arising from the Trucks Cartel had been suspended as of the European Commission’s (“EC”) dawn raid of the defendant’s premises in 2011.

On December 11, 2018, the German Federal Court of Justice (“FCJ”) held that, at least in relation to quota fixing and customer allocation cartels, plaintiffs could no longer rely on prima facie evidence to establish that a cartel infringement led to causal damage.[1] The FCJ accepted, however, a factual presumption (tatsächliche Vermutung)— softer compared to prima facie evidence—that cartels would lead to an overcharge, and held that such a presumption was of “high indicative significance”. Since then, lower courts have rendered a number of judgments and struggled with applying the new evidentiary standard in practice.

On April 2, 2019, the General Court dismissed an application by Swedish agricultural cooperative Lantmännen for interim measures to block the Commission from disclosing documents it had submitted in the course of the settlement procedure in the Ethanol Benchmarks[1] case to its co-defendants.[2]

As the charts below show, enforcement by concurrent competition agencies has increased substantially since the ERRA came into force.[1]…

In November 2013, David Currie – then Chairman of the CMA – identified the low volume of competition cases in regulated sectors: “These sectors account in total for some 25% of the economy. They are also typically characterised by monopolistic or oligopolistic market structures. This might suggest the need for more, rather than less, competition enforcement than in other parts of the economy.”[1]