State action defense

The action seeking annulment of the decision by the Commission to approve aid granted by Finland to the airline Finnair is dismissed in its entirety* The Commission was entitled to approve the recapitalisation of Finnair, carried out by its public and private owners on a pro rata basis in (...)

Intra-State Transfers and the Discretion of Public Authorities* Resources transferred from one public authority to another for the purpose of being used to subsidise undertakings do not fall within the scope of Article 107(1) TFEU if the recipient authority has discretion in their (...)

On February 2, 2022, the General Court of the European Union handed down two judgments concerning the investigation against Russia’s Gazprom into the supply of gas to eight Central and Eastern European Member States, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, (...)

The General Court annuls the Commission’s decision to reject a complaint lodged by a Polish wholesaler* The Commission failed to respect the Polish wholesaler’s procedural rights in the proceedings which led to the adoption of that decision Between 2011 and 2015, the European Commission (...)

The Commission Need not Always Open the Formal Investigation Procedure before Correcting a Faulty Decision* The formal investigation procedure need not be re-opened when the fault lies in the legal assessment of the measure in question. Introduction This article examines when the (...)

The Court of Justice (‘the Court’), sitting as a Grand Chamber, dismissed an appeal lodged by the European Commission (‘the Commission’) against the General Court’s judgment annulling the Commission’s negative decision concerning the intervention of the Fondo interbancario di tutela dei (...)

ANTITRUST NEWS: THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT AGREES THAT THE SUPREME COURT’S PHOEBE PUTNEY DECISION REALLY DID CHANGE THE STATE-ACTION-IMMUNITY TEST FROM THE EARLIER HALLIE AND OMNI DECISIONS* The Eleventh Circuit recently rejected the City of LaGrange’s attempt to assert state-action immunity from (...)

The Dirk Andres v. Commission judgment is one of four judgments delivered on 28 June 2018 on the same Commission decision, which considered the possibility offered by Germany to companies in difficulty to carry forward losses as selective and constituting State aid. These four judgments are (...)

The decision under observation forms part of a series of disputes between Crédit Mutuel Arkéa (CMA) and Confédération nationale du Crédit mutuel. Crédit Mutuel is a mutual banking network organised at three territorial levels: the 2 100 local mutual banks, each of which is a member of one of (...)

By the recent decision handed down in the case Usi in Materia di Mediazione Immobiliare (UMMI) the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has closed an antitrust investigation by finding two price-fixing arrangements in the market for the real estate brokerage services agents implemented by two (...)

Summary of the case After a lengthy process the Danish Supreme Court finally closed the curtain in September 2015 on a potential new, and competing, terminal in Copenhagen Airport, the main Danish airport hub. A group of investors had asked the airport to grant access (a lease) to a plot of (...)

CCI dismisses allegation of abuse of dominance against various States’ Department of Information and Public Relations* CCI by its order dated August 5, 2015 dismissed allegations against Departments of Information and Public Relations of various State Governments. It was alleged that the (...)

Introduction The history of hospital merger enforcement has been mixed. Both of the United States federal antitrust enforcement agencies, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), were initially quite successful in litigating hospital mergers . This was (...)

Slower Crony Capitalism: The Immediate Aftermath of NC Board* When the FTC prevailed in narrowing the state action exemption in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners in February 2015, the hope of many commentators was that the result might be a reduction in excessive or unnecessary local (...)

LegalZoom Kicks Off Antitrust Battle Against State Bar Associations* State bar associations and other licensing boards were left like bleeding seals in shark-infested waters following the United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision this February in North Carolina State Board of Dental (...)