Laurence Bary

Following a Phase II investigation, the European Commission (the “Commission”) on 6 September 2022 prohibited the acquisition of Grail by Illumina, on the basis that the merger would allegedly stifle innovation in the emerging market for early cancer detection tests based on sequencing (...)

In ten years, digital has become one of the main focuses, if not THE main one, of antitrust enforcers in Europe and worldwide. As a result, a very large number of competition law cases touch upon the question of digitalization. Over the past two years alone, hundreds of decisions and initiatives have been issued by competition enforcers worldwide, which aim to address some aspect(s) of the digital economy. This issue of e-Competitions devoted to “Antitrust in the Digital Sector” includes more than a hundred articles written on the subject in 2020-2021, and many more could have been added. It is obviously impossible, in this Foreword, to cover it all. We will therefore try to concentrate on the more significant developments of the past two years, starting with the paradigm-changing initiatives that have been proposed and, in some cases, already implemented for the ex ante regulation of platforms. The past two years have also seen numerous decisions and ongoing cases against the GAFAM, targeting both “classic” issues, including interoperability, foreclosure or exchanges of information, and evolving concerns, such as the boundary between privacy and competition law. Finally, digitalization has even impacted merger control. On this side of the Atlantic, the evolution of the European Commission’s doctrine regarding the application of Article 22 of Regulation No 139/2004 (the “European Merger Control Regulation” or “EUMR”) is meant to allow the Commission to look at acquisitions made by the largest platforms – with limited results so far. In the United States, agencies are proactively looking back to acquisitions made by the GAFAM in the past, entertaining the possibility of actually unwinding some of them.

On 10 May 2022, the European Commission (the “Commission”) adopted the final version of the new Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (“VBER”), which will enter into force on 1 June 2022. The new VBER, which replaces Regulation No. 330/2010 of 20 April 2010, is accompanied by a new version of the (...)

The European Court of Justice has confirmed that financial investors can incur parental liability for the anticompetitive practices of portfolio companies, even after an IPO that left the investor holding only a minority stake in the company, provided that they still have sufficient (...)

This article has been nominated for the 2021 Antitrust Writing Awards. Click here to learn more about the Antitrust Writing Awards. The European Court of Justice has confirmed that financial investors can incur parental liability for the anticompetitive practices of portfolio companies, even (...)

Key Takeaways Following several individual initiatives by member state competition authorities to temporarily relax competition rules in specific sectors, the European Competition Network (which includes the European Commission and all member state competition authorities) has issued a more (...)