On July 1, 2022, the Conseil d’Etat (the French administrative supreme court) ruled[1] that it had no jurisdiction to annul a decision of the French Competition Authority (the “FCA”) rejecting commitments offered by the group Sony (“Sony”) to end competition proceedings and referring the case back for further investigation.[2]
The UK Government’s responses to its consultations on ‘Reforming competition and consumer policy’ (April 2022) and ‘A new pro-competitive regime for digital markets’ (May 2022) included three proposals to amend or add jurisdictional or reporting criteria for the UK merger control regime. These would give the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) oversight of a wider range of mergers if implemented.
In her second term as EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager’s focus to date has been on securing approval for the
On June 16, 2022, the Paris Court of Appeals (the “Court”) ruled that “decisions to protect the confidentiality of business secrets taken during the course of the investigation, which have not been challenged pursuant to Article R. 463-15 of the French Commercial Code, continue to bind the College when adopting and drafting the decision on the merits, otherwise such decisions would be deprived of any effectiveness” (the “Ruling”).[1]
On June 16, 2022, the Court of Justice set aside four judgments of the General Court and partially annulled the Commission’s decision in the Optical Disc Drives cartel case.[1]
On June 16, 2022, the French Competition Authority accepted binding commitments from Meta to introduce new policies enhancing advertising service providers’ access to its online advertising technologies.
On June 15, 2022, the General Court annulled the Commission’s decision and corresponding fine of €997 million in the Qualcomm case[1] due to procedural violations and a flawed substantive assessment. The General Court first found that the Commission had infringed Qualcomm’s rights of defense by failing to properly inform Qualcomm of meetings with third parties, and failing to hear Qualcomm on the consequences of substantial changes between the Statement of Objections (“SO”) and the final decision.
In a decision published on June 13, 2022, the ICA cleared the acquisition of 51% of the share capital of Press-Di Distribuzione Stampa e Multimedia S.r.l. (“Press-Di” or the “Target”) by Artoni Group S.p.A. (“Artoni”) and SHR S.r.l. (“SHR” and, jointly, the “Parties”). As a result, the Parties acquired joint control over the Target together with the seller Mondadori Media S.p.A. (the “Transaction”).[1]
On June 9, 2022, the Council of State upheld appeals submitted by Media Partners & Silva Limited and MP Silva S.r.l. (jointly, “MP Silva”), by partially dismissing bid-rigging fines imposed by the ICA for the assignment of broadcasting rights for football matches in countries other than Italy.[1]
On June 1, 2022, the General Court heard arguments from Meta (previously Facebook) and the Commission in the case relating to Meta’s challenge of a Commission decision dated May 4, 2020, issued in the context of the Commission’s antitrust investigation into Facebook’s data- related practices.[1]