On July 29, 2019, the Court of Justice confirmed that the Hungarian courts had jurisdiction to rule on damages claims brought by Tibor-Trans Fuvarozó és Kereskedelmi Kft. (“Tibor-Trans”), a Hungarian logistics company, against DAF Trucks N.V. (“DAF”), one of the members of the EU-wide trucks cartel.[1] The Court of Justice clarified that cartel victims may claim damages in any Member State affected by a cartel, even where they had no direct contractual relationship with the cartelists.

On July 24, 2019, the Italian Competition Authority (the “ICA”) issued a decision[1] (the “Decision”) finding that the Milan Notarial Board had violated Article 2 of Law No. 287/90 (the “MNB”). According to the ICA, the MNB allegedly collected disaggregated data on the performance of notaries in the Milan district in order to monitor their economic activity and discourage aggressive competition. However, the anticompetitive use of the data stopped when the ICA started the proceedings and, thus, the cartel did not have any anticompetitive effect. As a consequence, the ICA did not impose a fine.

On July 18, 2019, the Commission fined Qualcomm €242 million for abusing its dominance in the global market for broadband chipsets by selling below cost to “strategically important” customers, to force a competitor out of the market.[1] This is the first time in 16 years that the Commission has fined a company for predatory pricing after the Wanadoo decision of 2003.[2]

On July 18, 2019, the Commission conditionally approved Vodafone’s acquisition of Liberty Global’s cable networks business in Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Germany, following a Phase II review.[1] This case is the latest in a wave of consolidation across the EEA’s telecommunications sector (such as Liberty Global/Ziggo, Vodafone/Liberty Global/Dutch JV, and Altice/PT Portugal).[2]

On July 17, 2019, the Italian Competition Authority (the “ICA”) imposed fines in excess of €287 million on 23 companies for two distinct anticompetitive agreements in breach of Article 101 TFEU (the “Decision” and the “Infringements”, respectively).[1] According to the ICA, the two cartels were implemented in two different markets which were vertically related to each other, namely the upstream market for corrugated cardboard sheets (the “Sheets Cartel”) and the downstream market for corrugated cardboard cases (the “Cases Cartel”). The Infringements allegedly also involved the relevant trade association Gruppo Italiano Fabbricanti Cartone Ondulato (“GIFCO”).