On May 10, 2022, the ICA accepted and made binding the commitments offered by the parties in an investigation concerning an alleged exchange of information in the direct sales of motor vehicle insurance policies. The alleged exchange took place between Italy’s leading companies offering price-comparison services (the “Comparators”) and 13 insurance companies (the “Insurance Companies”) and intermediaries (the “Intermediaries”; jointly, the “Parties”).[1]
On May 9, 2022, the Council of State delivered three judgments in annulment proceedings brought by the addressees of a 2019 ICA decision, which found 19 companies liable for participating in a cartel aimed at rigging a tender procedure in the facility maintenance sector in Italy (the “Decision”).[1]
On March 30, 2022, after a decade of litigation in over a dozen separate cases, the General Court partially annulled the Commission’s March 17, 2017 decision imposing a €776 million fine on air carriers for coordinated practices and agreements relating to air freight transport between 1999 and 2006.[1] The General Court upheld the Commission’s decision although, in six of 13 appeals lodged against the decision,[2] the Court found that the Commission had infringed procedural rights and/or failed to establish the participation of certain air carriers in certain parts of the infringement. The General Court reduced the corresponding fines and dismissed the remaining seven appeals in their entirety.
In a series of non-final judgments, published between February 15 and 25, 2022 (the “Judgments”),[1] the Council of State upheld the appeals for revocation filed by Medicair Italia S.r.l., Medigas S.r.l., Linde Medicale S.r.l., Sapio Life S.r.l. and Vivisol S.r.l. (the “Parties”), as it found a number of material errors in certain previous judgments of the same court.[2]
On February 2, 2022, the General Court dismissed Scania’s trucks cartel appeal and essentially endorsed the Commission’s hybrid cartel procedure that bifurcates the Commission’s investigation into a settlement path with willing parties and an adversarial path with any hold outs.[1] The General Court was satisfied that the Commission examined all the facts and arguments that Scania (a non-settling party) brought before it afresh, and in particular, without relying on the facts or conclusions reached during the settlement procedure, which ensured a fair and impartial adversarial procedure.
On January 18, 2022, the German Federal Cartel Office published a press release of its review of two sustainability initiatives. Only a week later, on January 25, 2022, the FCO provided further guidance for the implementation of sustainability initiatives under competition law: It concluded that a proposed agreement in the milk sector to introduce surcharges for the benefit of milk producers was anticompetitive.
With the examination of two sustainability cooperations concerning living wages in the banana sector as well as the expansion of an animal welfare initiative, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) provided further guidance for the implementation of sustainability initiatives in the food retail industry.
Between January 18 and January 20, 2022, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) raided the German premises of four associations and several manufacturers of electrical cables and wires in relation to alleged coordination of industry-standard metal surcharges.
On December 28, 2021 and January 21, 2022, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) imposed fines totaling €7.3 million on Maurer SE (“Maurer”) and Mageba GmbH, Göttingen (“Mageba”) for bid rigging and market allocation.[1]