Introduction
On December 9, 2021, the Commission published its Draft Guidelines on the application of EU competition law to collective agreements regarding working conditions of solo self-employed people (the “Draft Guidelines”).[1] The Draft Guidelines, along with a proposal for a directive[2] and a communication,[3] form part of a broader package aimed at improving the working conditions of persons operating on digital labor platforms.[4]
On December 7, 2021, the Commission, the United States Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) published a Joint Statement establishing the EU-U.S. Joint Technology Competition Policy Dialogue (the “Policy Dialogue”).
Businesses applying for aid in disadvantaged regions of the EU will face new rules after December 31, 2021.
The new
Cleary Gottlieb partners Romano Subiotto QC and Robbert Snelders, in collaboration with our Antitrust practice, are thrilled to present
On November 18, 2021, the Court of Justice clarified the framework for assessing anticompetitive agreements between a software developer and its distributors, and ordered a Latvian court to revisit its analysis before adjudicating on the case.[1]
On November 18, 2021, the Commission published its communication entitled “a competition policy fit for new challenges” (the “Communication”).[1] The Communication identifies several areas where an adjusted competition policy could help overcome new challenges the European economy is facing. In particular, the Communication discusses competition policy’s role in Europe’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, in supporting the European green[2] and digital transition,[3] and in strengthening the Single market’s resilience.
On November 10, 2021, the General Court upheld the Commission’s decision finding that Google had committed an abuse by favoring its own comparison shopping service (“CSS”).[1] The Commission previously found that Google positioned and displayed, in its general search results pages, its own CSS more prominently than competing CSSs. The Commission imposed on Google a fine of €2.42 billion.[2] In the judgment, the General Court largely dismissed Google’s appeal against the Commission’s decision and confirmed the amount of the fine.
On October 29, 2021, for the first time, the Commission imposed interim measures on companies that closed a deal before obtaining merger approval. On August 18, 2021, U.S. gene-sequencing company Illumina publicly announced it had acquired Grail, a start-up that has developed multi-cancer early detection tests.
The Commission is returning to the office; but not just to its own. It recently launched dawn raids in three separate investigations and warned of more to come after two years of inactivity in this regard. The COVID-19 pandemic made it impracticable for the Commission to conduct dawn raids, let alone coordinate in multiple countries at once. The receding pandemic, however, allows for a rise in dawn raids.
On October 6, 2021, the Court of Justice dismissed eight appeals[1] brought against the 2019 judgments of the General Court, upholding the classification of Spanish tax rules on the amortization of financial goodwill as State aid incompatible with the internal market. The judgments are noteworthy as the Court of Justice, sitting as the Grand Chamber, shed light on the interpretation of the notion of selectivity—one of the cumulative criteria required for a national measure to qualify as State aid contrary to EU law.