Policy & Procedure

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic disruption, including supply shortages, cost increases, and liquidity constraints resulting from a prolonged shutdown. As EU Member States and businesses respond to these challenges, their actions continue to raise potential issues under EU competition law.

CMA merger decisions are subject to judicial review by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). Challenges to the CMA’s substantive decision-making have, however, generally been unsuccessful. Although the CAT has been willing to intervene on matters of procedural fairness and errors of law, as recent decisions confirm, the CAT is reluctant to intervene in the CMA’s assessment of competitive effects and identification of remedies.

Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Payment Systems Regulator (PSR)

The FCA and PSR announced that they support the CMA’s guidance on its approach to business cooperation in response to COVID-19 under competition law and will take a consistent approach to their competition law enforcement activity in the financial services sector. This means that these regulators will not enforce competition law in a way that impedes financial services providers from working together to provide essential services to consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 27, 2020, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) published a press release announcing that a number of applicable deadlines for merger review and antitrust proceedings will be adapted further to legal order no. 2020-306 of March 25, 2020 relating to the extension of time- limits during the state of public health emergency.

COVID-19 and Civil Procedure Rule Updates. On 25 March 2020, Civil Procedure Rule Practice Direction 51Y (PD51Y) came into force, to facilitate video and audio hearings for the duration of the pandemic.

On March 12, 2020, the General Court confirmed the Commission’s decision to reject a complaint brought by LL-Carpenter (“Carpenter”), a Czech distributor of motor vehicles, against Subaru for alleged anti-competitive conduct. The judgment serves as a reminder of the Commission’s wide discretion to evaluate and reject complaints.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic disruption, including supply shortages, cost increases, and liquidity constraints resulting from a prolonged shutdown. As EU Member States and businesses respond to these challenges, and even as lockdown measures are gradually eased, their actions continue to raise potential issues under competition law.

On February 19, 2020, the Commission unveiled its strategy to “shape Europe’s digital future.”[1] This strategy identifies three key objectives: invest in technology that works for people (which includes investment in connectivity, discussions over a framework for AI, cybersecurity, and data literacy), develop a fair and competitive economy (which focuses on the creation of a single market for data and the use of competition law policies to level the playing field), and create an open, democratic, and sustainable society.

On February 19, 2020, the FCA expressed its views on the possible lines of approach to enhance antitrust enforcement in the digital sector, both at the EU and national levels. This publication covers questions relating to anticompetitive practices and merger control, and shows the FCA’s willingness to be part of the on-going thinking process launched by the European Commission and many competition authorities and regulators around the world in order to deal swiftly with questions raised by the growth of digital platforms. The FCA will endeavor to update its contribution in light of legislative proposals that could be formulated in the coming months and the reactions that the publication might trigger.