competitionlaw

Upon the receipt of a complaint filed by Ama Spa (Ama), the in-house provider of waste management services for the municipality of Rome, the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an antitrust investigation against several operators (decision of 12 December 2018, case I831, Gare Ama Servizio smaltimento rifiuti ). The ICA feared that these firms had coordinated their behaviours in connection to two tender competitive procedures organized by Ama for procuring waste management services it required. Those tender procedures were launched in February and July 2018 and were aimed at awarding the public contracts for the provision of services for transport and disposal of waste and other materials produced by the plants run by Ama for the treatment of urban waste. The minimum prices quoted in the tender notices issued in February and July 2018 were higher than those applied by Ama in its previous procedures. These prices were also in line with the winning bids for the contracts f...

Applying its 2014 Aviation Guidelines, the European Commission ruled that operating aid granted by the German authorities to the airport of Erfurt-Weimer is compatible with the internal market (Decision of 27.06.2018, case SA.46945 - Germany Erfurt-Weimer Airport ). The notified national measures consisted of operating aid to the owner of the airport, FEG, aimed to ensure the existing capacity of the airport and sustainably secure its functioning. The aid was combined with the FEG’s new business strategy to develop higher traffic more dependent on charter flights and less on low cost carriers. The Commission considered the public support to FEG as State aid within the meaning of Article 107 TFEU and then considered whether it met the compatibility conditions in the 2014 Aviation Guidelines. a)The condition of contribution to a well-defined objective of common interest There was no other airport within the catchment area of the beneficiary (a travelling distance of 100 km or ...

What if a cartelist sells the business that was responsible for the competition infringement to a third party? Who should be liable for the infringement under EU competition law? The transferor or/and the transferee? The general rule for attribution of competition liability under EU law is the principle of personal liability whereby it is the transferor if it still exists to be liable for the infringement committed by the transferred business. The principle of personal liability does not apply in a situation where the transferor or the original infringer is still in existence though no longer operating in the relevant market affected by the cartel and is connected with the transferee by structural links. In this case, the competition liability is allocated to the transferee on the basis of the criterion of economic continuity as an exception to the principle of personal liability.   This approach was followed by the General Court of the EU (GC) in its judgment recently delivere...