competitionlaw

The first post of 2021 is about the decision handed down by the Luxembourg Competition Authority (LCA) in the LNS case (no. 2020-NC-06, LaboratoireNational de Santé ). In this case the LCA examined and rejected an application for interim relief against allegedly anticompetitive practices concerning Covid-19 testing in the middle of the pandemics. The proceedings commenced on 14 September 2020 when Bionext, a privately-held medical laboratory, filed a complaint with the LCA. By the complaint Bionext reported a number of practices put in place by a competing public undertaking, Laboratoire National de Santé (LNS), which appeared to breach Article 102 TFEU and the corresponding national competition rules. More specifically, Bionext pointed to the decision of the Luxembourg authorities to confer on LNS a legal monopoly on some Covid-19 testing methods: the PCR tests for hospitals and serological tests to be executed in the context of the government-backed massive screening campaign. Foll...

In the Ordre des architects et des ingénieurs-conseils et Monsieur Carlo Frank case the Luxembourg Competition Authority (LCA) considered whether the Luxembourgish Association of Architects and Engineers (OAI) and a member of it put in place an anti-competitive price-fixing agreement. In June 2018 a customer of a Luxembourg-architect and member of the OAI, CF, filed a complaint with the LCA, reporting that CF invoiced him fees for professional services determined on the basis of the fee scale recommended by the OAI (the Fee Scale). That, in the view of the complainant, gave raise to two competition breaches: i) Non-compliance with the LCA’s commitment decision of 5 February 2014 by which the OAI committed to refrain from issuing recommended Fee Scale to be incorporated by its members into the service contracts concluded with their clients as basis to determine the fees to be paid by the clients. ii) A concerted practice by which the OAI and its members jointly determined the ...