Industries

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic disruption, including supply shortages, cost increases, and liquidity constraints resulting from a prolonged shutdown. As EU Member States and businesses respond to these challenges, their actions continue to raise potential issues under EU competition law.

CMA merger decisions are subject to judicial review by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). Challenges to the CMA’s substantive decision-making have, however, generally been unsuccessful. Although the CAT has been willing to intervene on matters of procedural fairness and errors of law, as recent decisions confirm, the CAT is reluctant to intervene in the CMA’s assessment of competitive effects and identification of remedies.

On March 31, 2020, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire verbally notified US defense manufacturer Teledyne that it would block U.S. conglomerate Teledyne’s proposed acquisition of French night vision startup Photonis.[1] This will be the first use by the Economy Ministry of its veto powers over transactions in strategic industries under the French foreign investment control regime.

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Payment Systems Regulator (PSR)

The FCA and PSR announced that they support the CMA’s guidance on its approach to business cooperation in response to COVID-19 under competition law and will take a consistent approach to their competition law enforcement activity in the financial services sector. This means that these regulators will not enforce competition law in a way that impedes financial services providers from working together to provide essential services to consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 27, 2020, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) published a press release announcing that a number of applicable deadlines for merger review and antitrust proceedings will be adapted further to legal order no. 2020-306 of March 25, 2020 relating to the extension of time- limits during the state of public health emergency.

COVID-19 and Civil Procedure Rule Updates. On 25 March 2020, Civil Procedure Rule Practice Direction 51Y (PD51Y) came into force, to facilitate video and audio hearings for the duration of the pandemic.