Chillin'Competition

A quick personal thought. On face value, the current prioritization policy followed by the Commission is slightly confusing. Earlier in the year, the Commission adopted a guidance communication on enforcement priorities under Article 82 EC, which does not cover exploitative abuses, thereby sending the signal that such types of abuses are not really a prime candidate for Article 82 EC enforcement. In line with this, the Commission announced yesterday that it dropped its investigation in the Qualcomm case.

I find it quite problematic to reconcile this prioritization trend with the annoucement, on 19 November, that the Commission sent a Statement of Objections to Standard and Poor’s for alleged unfair pricing for the use of International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs)…

A plausible explanatory factor: in the field of Article 82 EC, prioritization is currently made on a sectoral basis. Under this interpretation, the Standard and Poor’s case illustrates, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, that the Commission arguably intends to closely scrutinize financial services. This is consistent with the recent announcement of the opening of  formal proceedings against Thomson Reuters concerning use of Reuters Instrument Codes.

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