Germany

On February 26, 2019, the FCO approved RWE AG’s (“RWE”) acquisition of a minority stake of 16.67% in E.ON SE (“E.ON”).[1] The acquisition is part of a complex share and asset swap deal between the two energy companies. Following the share and asset swap, E.ON will focus on the distribution and retail of electricity and gas, whereas RWE will be primarily active in upstream electricity generation and wholesale markets.

On February 25, 2019, the FCO concluded its abuse of dominance investigation against the German National Olympic Committee (Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund, “DOSB”) and the International Olympic Committee (“IOC”) with a commitment decision.[1] The FCO had launched its investigation in 2017, following a complaint by the German Association of the Sporting Goods Industry (Bundesverband der Sportartikel-Industrie).

On July 2, 2014, the Commission conditionally cleared Telefónica Deutschland’s acquisition of E-plus, KPN’s German mobile telecommunications business, which combined the third and fourth largest mobile network operators in Germany. The acquisition was characterized as a 4-to-3 merger resulting in three mobile operators of a similar size.[1]

On February 14, 2019, the Commission published a decision, adopted on December 7, 2018,[1] accepting commitments offered by TenneT, an electricity transmission system operator (“TSO”), to remove restrictions on, and in the long term also to increase, the maximum capacity of the electricity interconnector between Germany and West Denmark (“the DE-DK1 interconnector”).

On February 6, 2019, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) prohibited Facebook’s practice of collecting and processing user data from Facebook’s own services as well as from third-party services without users’ freely given consent.[1] After an investigation of nearly three-years, the FCO found that this practice amounted to an exploitative abuse of a dominant position. For the first time, the FCO considered compliance with data protection rules in its abuse of dominance analysis.

On February 6, 2019—the same day the Siemens/Alstom decision was adopted—and again following a Phase II investigation, the Commission prohibited German rolled copper products manufacturer Wieland’s proposed acquisition of Aurubis’s rival business and of its 50% stake in the parties’ pre-rolled strip manufacturing joint-venture Schwermetall.[1]

The FCO and the Austrian Federal Competition Authority (“FCA”) closed a joint probe of an agreement between the German-based ad blocker company Eyeo and Google after the companies had changed certain terms of their whitelisting contract.[1] Following complaints about Eyeo’s ad blocker Adblock Plus, the FCA had launched an investigation in Austria in 2013. FCO subsequently joined the proceedings in May 2016.