competitionlaw

This post also deals with the decision of the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) in Sardinia Ferry Fares (Case I743). More precisely, it dwells on the approach taken by the ICA to discharge its evidentiary burden to establish a concerted practice. In short, following the receipt of many reports from passengers complaining about increasing fares charged for the maritime links between Sardinia and Continental Italy, by a decision made on 11 May 2011 the ICA opened an Article 101 TFEU investigation against a number of ferry operators: Moby, Grandi Navi Veloci (GNV) and its parent companies Marinvest and Investitori Associati, SNAV and parent company, again, Marinvest, and Forship trading with the Sardinia Ferries brand. The ICA enquiry focuses on the fares charged for the links between the Sardinian ports of Golfo Aranci/Olbia and Porto Torres and the ports of Civitavecchia, Livorno and Genoa/Vado Ligure on Continental Italy. The ICA closed the investigation with the decision made o...

One of the most exciting news this year in the international competition law scene is perhaps the coming into life of a new supranational competition law regime. Earlier this year, on 14 January 2013, the competition law regime of COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) entered into force. And, a brand new authority, the COMESA Competition Commission (CCC) is entrusted with the enforcement of that regime. This post focuses on the COMESA merger control regime. The new COMESA merger law has been discussed at length here , here and here . It has been said that extensive jurisdictional criteria in the COMESA merger regulations to determine which transactions are notifiable to the CCC, the zero financial threshold and the low local nexus of the merging parties to the COMESA market, may undermine the functioning of the COMESA merger control system. Hopefully, these problems would be fixed by CCC with its incoming Merger Guidelines. However, the aim of this post is to examin...

Gulf of Naples, Strait of Messina and Sardinia Ferry Fares: The Italian Competition Authority to target ferry cartels or the hot summer of Italian ferry operators Apart from the difficult economic conditions affecting the 2013 Summer season, the Italian ferry operators have also to cope with the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) cartel enforcement activities of Italian Competition Authority (ICA). In the space of a few weeks the ICA opened two Article 102 TFEU proceedings in the Gulf of Naples (Autorità Garante del Mercato e della Concorrenza, decision n. 24357 of 30 May 2013, Case I689C , Organizzazione Servizi Marittimi nel Golfo di Napoli http://www.agcm.it/trasp-statistiche/doc_download/3765-24-13.html and Strait of Messina ( (Autorità Garante del Mercato e della Concorrenza, decision n. 24427 of 26 June 2013, Case I763, Servizi di Cabotoggio Marittimo Stretto diMessina ) cases on market sharing and price coordination agreements and it found out a price-fixing cartel be...

Currently, two train operators, Trenitalia belonging to the previous rail monopolist, the Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) group, and from April 2012, NTV compete on the Italian trucks to run high speed trains. By several complaints filed with the Italian Competition Authority (ICA), NTV reported that FS would put in place a complex exclusionary strategy aimed at hampering the NTV activities. Thus, by a decision made on 22 May 2013, the ICA started an investigation against FS on whether it had abused its dominant position by foreclosing the market for high speed rail passenger services. More precisely, the conducts reported by NTV affected the market for access to the national rail network, the market for the management of advertising spaces inside the main Italian stations and the market for high-speed passenger rail transport services. The anticompetitive conducts that FS has been alleged to have carried out have been divided by the ICA into three groups: a) Exclusionary behaviours F...

While under EU merger control regulation it is possible to impose a remedy to address the competition problems of the under review merger, the Italian Competition Act n. 287/1990 does not allow the merging parties and the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) to agree on remedies during the first phase of investigation. However, the parties may take benefit from informal talks with the ICA about possible competition problems and how to resolve them. This seems what may have happened in the Atlantia/Gemina case recently decided by the ICA. Through the implementation of the merger as originally notified to the ICA, the Edizione group would  acquire the sole control of the entity resulting from the combination between Atlantia and Gemina.  Gemina owns ADR, the manager of the Rome’s airports of Fiumicino and Ciampino and Atlantia, already controlled by Edizione, owns WDFG active in travel retail sector and Autogrill active in the airport catering market. In other words, the ...

For the third time in a space of few years ( Ryanair/AerLingus , Ryanair/Aer Lingus III and Olympic Air/Aegen Airlines ) the European Commission has blocked an airline merger leading to negative effects on competition. And for the second time in a row the Commission thwarted the attempts of Ryanair to purchase its Irish competitor Aer Lingus. What the prohibition decisions of Ryanair/Aer Lingus , Olympic Air/Aegen Airlines and Ryanair/Aer Lingus III appear to have in common is the theory of competition harm relied on by the Commission. The Commission blocked those transactions because of route dominance rather than slot dominance. In other words, the expected negative effects of the banned concentrations on competition were thought to be due to the post-merger dominant position that the parties would have on a number of links. On the other hand, the availability of slots was not a relevant issue in these cases. The airports from which the merging parties operated did not suffer...

By a recent commitment decision (Case A442 Assofort/ADR-Servizi Aeroportuali ) the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has closed an investigation against the manager of airport of Rome Fiumicino (FCO), Aeroporti di Roma (ADR). More precisely, ADR was alleged to have abused its dominant position in the market for the provision of access to common and exclusive use facilities necessary to carry out economic activities at FCO. In the ICA view, ADR would have charged excessive prices to Hertz Italiana (Hertz). Hertz through its local agent (DMH) provided low cost innovative rent-a- car services at FCO, labelled Advantage-rent-car (Advantage). Advantage enable clients to make their booking though a dedicated internet site and upon arrival at FCO they are picked up by shuttle buses calling at the parking lots located outside the airport where they can find the cars they have booked. ADR objected to Hertz that in carrying out the Advantage Business it breached the sub-concession contrac...