Eric Barbier de la Serre

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)