


Eric Barbier de la Serre
Eric Barbier de La Serre has 20 years of experience in European and French competition law. He has handled numerous antitrust and state aid cases involving the telecommunications, electronic components, media, financial services, and energy sectors. Eric has been involved in settlement, commitment, interim relief, and sanctions proceedings before the European Commission and the French Competition Authority. He also has very extensive litigation experience before the EU courts and regularly advises on other aspects of EU law such as free movement of goods and services.
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4979 | Conférences


Articles
10232 Bulletin
223
In Short The Background : The European Commission ("Commission") recently unveiled long-awaited draft revisions to its Vertical Block Exemption Regulation ("VBER") and Vertical Guidelines. The VBER includes safe harbors that exempt some agreements in the vertical supply chain from antitrust (...)
382
In Short The Situation : According to the European Commission ("EC"), an increasing number of competitively significant transactions have evaded merger notification because one or both of the transacting parties (but typically a small, high value target) did not meet EC or any Member State (...)
461
In Short The Situation : The European Commission has launched its largest ever stimulus package to support recovery of EU economies from the COVID-19 pandemic’s unprecedented economic and social disruption. Each EU Member State must submit a recovery plan and funding requests for Commission (...)
120
In Short The Development : The European Commission ("EC") recently released two long-awaited legislative proposals, the Digital Services Act ("DSA") and Digital Markets Act ("DMA"), that would significantly increase the EC’s regulatory oversight of online platform companies (previewed in our (...)
405
In Short The Development : The European Court of Justice ("ECJ") ruled that the European Commission ("Commission") violated UPS’s rights of defense when it failed to provide UPS with the final economic model used in its decision to block UPS’s proposed acquisition of TNT in 2013. The Result : (...)
361
In December 2018, the French Competition Authority ("FCA") published a notice clarifying the FCA’s settlement procedure in competition cases ("Notice"). The FCA’s General Rapporteur may offer settlement to companies that agree not to challenge the allegations made against them in the statement of (...)
239
In April 2017, the European Commission ("Commission") published a tender offer seeking an assessment of the EU market for loan syndication and possible implications under EU competition rules. The successful candidate will draft a report providing an overview of the market and the relevant (...)
345
This week, the French Competition Authority ("FCA") imposed a EUR 80 million fine on the Altice Group, a major French telecommunications operator, for implementing two transactions before approval by the FCA (so-called "gun jumping"). The full text is not yet available, but this decision (...)
940
Ask a lawyer to name the most basic procedural right, he/she will likely reply : “the rights of defence”. To many lawyers, these rights appear – maybe even before access to justice – as the most immediate and natural guarantee in criminal or quasi-criminal proceedings. After all, before Adam and (...)
818
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recently ruled that dawn raids carried out at the premises of two French construction companies by the DGCCRF (French Department for Competition, Consumer Protection and Fraud) violated both the rights of defense and the right to privacy, due to (...)
186
The French Constitutional Council has declared constitutional the French Competition Authority’s power to (i) withdraw its decision authorizing a merger, for failure by the parties to comply with their commitments and (ii) has required that the parties re-notify their transaction. This is an (...)
954
A lesson on judicial review from the other European Court in Luxembourg* Legal change sometimes takes unpredictable paths : mid-April, something important happened for European law in Luxembourg, but this did not come from the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”). Not every reader of this (...)
746
Unlimited jurisdiction : the end of a misnomer ?* The past decade has seen a flurry of articles published trying to make sense of the degree of control that the EU Courts exercise on complex economic reasoning. By contrast, much less has been written about the Courts’ unlimited jurisdiction on (...)
1511
The literature on the modernisation of EU competition law has paid little attention to interim measures ordered by the European Commission and national competition authorities (NCAs). Yet their asymmetric development under the modernised system has proven to be a fascinating area for the (...)
602
Undertakings with a (seemingly) divided self : Beware* It is commonly accepted that, pursuant to the principle of intragroup immunity, Article 101 TFEU cannot catch agreements or concerted practices between entities that belong to the same undertaking. Article 101 TFEU requires coordination (...)
580
Google offers commitments to get off the radar screen* A case involving Google confirms that the French Competition Authority is keen on using a combination of interim measures and commitment proceedings in order help it quickly resolve maters which it perceives as competition issues. This may (...)
465
Dawn raids vs. the freedom of the press* Relying on what seems to be unprecedented reasoning, the President of the Paris Court of Appeals has quashed a judicial order authorizing a dawn raid against several companies belonging to Amaury, a French news group that publishes mainly sports (...)
463
The harmless error rule and the French commitment procedure* Merely one month before the ECJ delivered its very expected judgment in the Alrosa case, a ruling of the Paris Court of Appeals confirmed that the exercise of the rights of the defense in commitment procedures raises delicate issues (...)
431
Towards greater convergence on the calculation of fines* It is not uncommon for the law to progress as a consequence of significant discrepancies and disagreements arising between courts and enforcers. This is exactly what may currently be happening to the French rules governing the (...)
8307 Revue
564
L’indépendance et la transparence vont de pair et sont de la plus haute importance pour les autorités de concurrence. La transparence est une garantie d’indépendance. Par définition, les autorités de concurrence doivent être indépendantes à la fois du secteur public et du secteur privé. L’indépendance (...)
2429
Les entreprises choisissent parfois de vendre conjointement plusieurs de leurs produits, en assortissant cette vente couplée d’un rabais. Dans d’autres cas, elles offrent aux clients qui s’engagent sur la durée ou sur un volume d’achat des remises qui prennent alors un caractère fidélisant. Dans (...)
1085
La deuxième table-ronde de la conférence New Frontiers of Antitrust du 10 février 2012 à Paris était dédiée à la question de l’autonomie procédurale en matière de concurrence. Après une brève introduction de Guy Canivet, membre du Conseil constitutionnel, Éric Barbier de la Serre, avocat chez Jones Day et (...)
1802
L’affaire Ryanair/Aer Lingus a récemment relancé le débat sur la nécessité d’un contrôle ex ante des prises de participation minoritaires par les autorités de concurrence. La notion de "contrôle", utilisée par la majorité des autorités, est en effet par essence inadaptée pour appréhender de telles (...)
1084
Quels sont les contours du référé en droit de la concurrence devant le juge de l’Union ? C’est à cet exercice que s’essaie cet article, à travers l’analyse des ordonnances de référé rendues dans cette matière entre 1999 et 2011. Les conclusions tirées de cette étude montrent que, si le champ du référé (...)
1343
Interim measures are a keystone of competition enforcement. Yet this tool has only recently gained momentum in Europe and competition authorities rarely order interim measures. Times are changing, however, and national competition authorities (NCAs) are becoming more proactive in this area. (...)
Livres

Cet ouvrage collectif, dans sa 3ème édition, fournit une synthèse des décisions du droit de concurrences essentiels entre 1990 et 2016. Le livre est structuré en deux parties : la première partie (...)

The purpose of this book is to compare and contrast EU competition case law with European Members States competition case law, and Members States competition case law with each other. To the best (...)