The EU Court of Justice AG Kokott proposes that non-reportable transactions could be caught by abuse of dominance rules (Towercast)

Advocate General Juliane Kokott has proposed that the EU Court of Justice should find that competition authorities have the power to apply Article 102 TFEU to corporate transactions that are not reportable, and test under that provision whether the transaction as such constitutes an abuse of a dominant position. However, a competition authority cannot in this way apply the abuse of dominance rules to transactions that were already approved under an EU merger control regime. Background In June 2016, television transmission service operator TDF Infrastructure ("TDF") acquired its competitor Itas SAS ("Itas"). Prior to the acquisition, TDF was already the largest of the three companies active on the relevant market, i.e., TDF, Itas and Towercast S.A.S.U. ("Towercast"). Following the