Barbara Monti is an associate in the antitrust and EU competition team in Brussels and advises clients on all aspects of European and French/Belgian competition law from a broad range of sectors. Her practice focuses on the technology, internet, consumer brands, and energy sectors including renewable energy, market manipulation, and abuse of dominant position. She regularly counsels on vertical agreements and merger control. Her previous experience allowed Ms. Monti to gain a significant knowledge of the French Competition Authority and compliance program.
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Gazprom: General Court confirms Commission’s commitment decision but annuls a decision based on similar grounds to reject a complaint against Gazprom On 2 February 2022, the General Court of the European Union (the “Court”) issued two judgments which follow the European Commission’s (the (...)
293
On 15 December 2021, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) published the non-confidential version of its decision in Advanz Pharma, which provides further insight into its approach to dealing with excessive pricing. As reported earlier (See Michael Clancy, Samuel Hall, Peter L’Ecluse, (...)
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On 9 December 2021, the Italian Competition Authority (“ICA”) adopted a decision finding that the Amazon group (“Amazon”) had violated Article 102 TFEU and harmed competing providers of e-commerce logistics services by tying the right of retailers on the Amazon marketplace to participate in (...)
275
On 10 November 2021, the European General Court (“EGC” or “Court”) delivered its landmark Google Shopping judgment, the first judicial pronouncement on “self-preferencing” as a viable theory of harm under Article 102 TFEU. The EGC fully endorsed the European Commission’s (“Commission”) decision that (...)
151
On 31 March 2022, the CMA published one of its longest decisions (1077 pages), in which it imposed fines of £155 million on Accord-UK (previously Auden McKenzie/Actavis) for excessive price increases on hydrocortisone tablets after they were de-branded and fell outside the UK NHS price (...)
244
Back in 2020, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) had announced, in its annual priorities, its interest in the competition implications of the digital revolution in the financial sector, notably in the context of the growth of FinTech, the introduction of blockchain technology and the (...)
79
The French Competition Authority (“FCA”) prohibited the proposed acquisition of the hypermarket retailer Géant Casino by its competitor E.Leclerc in the French city of Troyes. It found that the transaction would create a duopoly between the two remaining hypermarkets, Carrefour and E.Leclerc, (...)
154
At a time when COVID-19 is having direct and indirect effects on the reduction of greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions and ensuing global warming, eight French regulators, including the French Competition Authority, issued on 5 May 2020 a joint working paper in which they highlight the need to take (...)
19
In this case, for the first time, the General Court of the European Union analyzes the impact of systemic or generalized failures of the rule of law in an EU Member State on the determination of which competition authority is best placed to examine a complaint. At the origin of this judgment, (...)
19
This case follows the Commission’s decision in the so-called "trucks" cartel (Comm. eur., Sept. 27, 2017, Dec. C(2017) 6467 final, aff. AT.39824 - Trucks). With this decision, it found that several companies belonging to the applicants’ group had violated the antitrust rules. The decision was (...)
21
On the same day, the European Court of First Instance handed down two judgments in the wake of the Commission’s decision concerning certain practices implemented by the Gazprom company. The first judgment, under chronicle, annuls the Commission’s decision rejecting the complaint lodged by a (...)
22
The Commission had fined the applicant for abuse of its dominant position (Eur. Comm., Oct. 15, 2014, Dec. C(2014) 7465 final, Case AT.39523 - Slovak Telekom, corrected by Dec. C(2014) 10119 final and by Dec. C(2015) 2484 final). Although challenging this decision, the applicant had paid the (...)
72
At the beginning of this preliminary ruling, the European Commission had sanctioned 19 legal entities for having coordinated their tariff policies in the air freight sector between 1999 and 2006 (Comm. eur., dec. 17 March 2017, Fret Aérien, AT.39258, OJ C 188, p. 14-19). This decision was taken (...)
195
The questions raised by the jurisdiction of national courts to hear actions for damages for anti-competitive practices continue to give rise to abundant case law, which nevertheless tends towards greater clarification as to the fate of litigants (see CJEU, 21 May 2015, Cartel Damage Claims (...)
152
The present case once again calls into question the effectiveness of the judicial remedy, particularly in France, available to undertakings which have been the subject of inspections carried out by the European Commission with the assistance of the national competition authority of a Member (...)
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After three particularly developed judgments, the Court of First Instance returned to the Commission’s powers of inspection, the degree of formalism expected in relation to the evidence on which an inspection decision is based, and the protection of the material seized and the data copied under (...)
157
Ten years of proceedings is how long it took to foresee the closure of this case, which allows the Commission to reconsider its powers to reject complaints where, under Article 13(2) of Regulation 1/2003, a complaint is ’already being dealt with by another competition authority’. It all began in (...)
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It took 18 years for the European Commission to issue provisional measures on the basis of Article 8 of Regulation No 1/2003. Indeed, the last time the Commission imposed interim measures was in 2001 in the IMS Health case (EC Commission, press release IP/01/941 of 3 July 2001, The Commission (...)
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On 24 September 2019, the Court of First Instance of the European Union made an order dismissing as inadmissible the action brought by a non-profit-making public body, by reference to the Montessori case-law (CJEU, 6 Nov. 2018, Scuola Elementare Maria Montessori, cases C-622/16 P to C-624/16 P, (...)
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Each request for reparation has its own specificity. Here, the absence of a direct contractual link between the victim undertaking and the defendant undertaking allows the Court of Justice of the European Union once again to consider the concept of the ’place where the harmful event occurred or (...)
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Judgments recalling the European Commission’s obligation to state reasons in competition matters are legion. One recalls in particular the recent UPS judgment, in which the Court confirmed the annulment of the Commission’s decision prohibiting a merger on the grounds that the parties had not been (...)
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At the beginning of this preliminary ruling case, a Polish company was sanctioned by the national competition authority for having abused its dominant position on the market for group life insurance, both under national law for the period 2001-2007 and under EU competition rules, but only for (...)
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In the present case, the Court of First Instance was criticised for dismissing as inadmissible the action brought against a corrective decision, even though the Commission had omitted in its initial decision information concerning the determination of the basic amount of the fine to be imposed (...)
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Digitisation does not only affect companies. On 19 March 2019, the Commission announced a new secure online tool called eLeniency, which is supposed to guarantee both confidentiality and legal protection, similar to the current oral procedure. Be careful not to mislead, the tool is used in (...)
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In the field of mergers, there have been few judgments annulling Commission decisions based on violation of the rights of defence. The latest was in 2002, when the Court of First Instance ruled that the lack of clarity and precision of certain Commission objections infringed the rights of (...)
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The judgments of the ECJ under chronicle bring to a close the judicial saga dating back to February 2006, when the companies of the Gascogne group, Kendrion, ASPLA and Armando Álvarez brought an action before the Court of First Instance to have the Commission’s decision annulled, penalising them (...)
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