Category: Publications

Since its launch in 2007, Android has become the dominant mobile device operating system worldwide. In light of this commercial success and certain disputed business practices, Android has come under substantial attention from competition authorities. We present key aspects of Google’s strategy in mobile, focusing on Android-related practices that may have exclusionary effects. We then assess Google’s practices under competition law and, where appropriate, suggest remedies to right the violations we uncover.

New software platforms use modern information technology, including full-featured web sites and mobile apps, to allow service providers and consumers to transact with relative ease and increased trust. These platforms provide notable benefits including reducing transaction costs, improving allocation of resources, and information and pricing efficiencies. Yet they also raise questions of regulation, including how regulation should adapt to new services and capabilities, and how to correct market failures that may arise. We explore these challenges and suggest an updated regulatory framework that is sufficiently flexible to allow software platforms to operate and deliver their benefits, while ensuring that service providers, users and third parties are adequately protected from harms that may arise.

On May 21st 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union in CDC Hydrogen Peroxide decided whether the application of jurisdiction clauses in actions for damages impedes the effective enforcement of EU competition law. The CJ stayed silent, however, on how to treat arbitration clauses, which similarly to jurisdiction clauses, exclude a default court jurisdiction. The question of how to interpret arbitration agreements in the event of an antitrust violation and subsequent actions for damages remains thus unanswered. In light of the foreseen increase in private enforcement of EU competition law, this problem gains significance. This is because arbitration agreements may be frequently used to govern commercial relationships between antitrust infringers and their injured direct contractors.

Against this background, the paper aims to analyse the consequences brought about by the existence of arbitration clauses in the event of actions for antitrust damages. It seeks to answer two …

There is a large amount of legal and economic literature on the fining policy of the European Commission for breaches of EU competition law. This paper takes a quantitative approach as it analyses the factors that have been considered by the Commission in establishing the level of the fine imposed on infringing undertakings in 110 cartel decisions, as well 11 abuse of dominance decisions, adopted between January 2000 and March 2017. The factors included in our analysis, which is summarized in two tables provided in an Annex, comprise inter alia the gravity of the infringement, the presence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the adoption of an entry fee, whether inability to pay was invoked, and in the case of cartels the presence of some form of leniency and/or the use of the settlement procedure. We also looked at whether these Commission decisions have been appealed to the General Court of the EU.

Our analysis shows that the Commission has made significant use of the …