The EU Court of Justice confirms the ex post application of abuse of dominance rules to non-notifiable mergers (Towercast)

On 16 March 2023, the Court of Justice (ECJ) issued a preliminary ruling in case C-449/21, Towercast SASU v. Autorité de la concurrence and others (“Towercast”) finding that concentrations that are not subject to any ex-ante notification requirement under national or EU merger control rules may nonetheless be subject to an ex-post abuse of dominance review by a national competition authority pursuant to Article 102 TFEU. The ruling arose from a question posed to the ECJ by the Paris Court of Appeal, which was considering a complaint to the French Competition Authority (FCA) lodged in 2017 by Towercast, a television