Abuse

On April 30, 2021, the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections to Apple alleging it abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps.[1] The Commission’s investigation follows Spotify’s complaint filed in March 2019,[2] and marks the first major procedural development in the four investigations opened against Apple in June 2020.[3]

On March 30, 2021, the Italian Competition Authority (the “ICA”) closed an investigation against three equipment manufacturers in the market for maintenance of high-tech diagnostic imaging devices, without finding any abuse of dominant position. The ICA found that the evidence collected during the investigation did not allow to confirm the allegations put forward at the beginning of the investigation.[1]

On March 25, 2021,[1] the Court of Justice ruled that to demonstrate abuse, where a dominant undertaking has already offered access to its infrastructure but on unfair terms, it is not necessary to show that access to the infrastructure is indispensable within the meaning of the Court of Justice’s Bronner essential facilities doctrine.

On March 24, 2021, the DCA stayed the proceedings regarding Facebook’s appeal against the FCO’s decision of 2019 prohibiting Facebook to combine data from different sources and referred a number of questions to the CJEU.[1] The CJEU is now called upon to consider the relevance infringements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) under competition law.

On March 17, 2021, the French Competition Authority (hereinafter, the “FCA”)[1] rejected the request for interim measures of various players in the online advertising industry concerning the introduction by Apple Inc. (“Apple”) of the App Tracking Transparency (“ATT”) feature as part of the upcoming changes in its iOS 14 operating system.

On March 16, 2021, the Commission announced the opening of a formal investigation into Public Power Corporation (“PPC”), the largest wholesale and retail electricity supplier in Greece, and majority-owned by the Greek State, for allegedly abusing its dominance in the Greek wholesale electricity sector through predatory pricing strategies arising from its bidding behavior.[1]

On March 4, 2021, the Commission launched a formal in-depth investigation into Teva’s patent filings conduct related to its blockbuster multiple sclerosis medicine, Copaxone.[1] This is reportedly the first time that the Commission investigates potential abuses relating to divisional patents filing strategies.[2] This announcement, together with the recent formation, on March 16, 2021, of a multilateral working group on pharmaceutical mergers with leading competition authorities, confirms the Commission’s continued interest in the pharmaceutical sector.[3]

On February 25, 2021, the Court of Justice held that the Commission and the Slovak competition authority did not infringe EU law when conducting two parallel investigations against Slovak Telekom.[1] Because the two investigations pertained to different product markets, regulators at the European and national level were entitled to proceed in parallel and eventually impose two distinct fines on Slovak Telekom.