Archive for the ‘Lunch talks and other events’ Category
Summertime developments in EU competition law (tax rulings, cement, Section 5 of the FTC Act and more on Google)
Lots of things happened while this blog was closed for holidays; here are a some comments on a selected few of those developments:
–The news: On 20 July the European Parliament issues its Draft Report on tax rulings unusually pre-concluding that “without prejudice to the outcome of the Commission’s ongoing state aid investigations” there has been a breach of State aid rules (MEPs appear to be getting into a habit of giving ex ante opinions in competition cases…) and –perhaps more understandably- suggesting the Commission to adopt guidelines on State aid and transfer pricing. A comment (and a bet): We have commented on these cases before, but this time I’m willing to bet a round of beers on the prediction that the Commission will not order any recovery in these cases and will rather use them to send a signal for the future. Any takers? [By the way, those interested in the subject should attend the Brussels School of Competition’s Morning Briefing about State aid and Tax Rulings on 16 October].
–The news: On Friday 31 July the Commission announced the closure of its longstanding investigation into the cement sector explaining that the evidence gathered was not “sufficiently conclusive”. A comment: As you might also remember some companies (including my client in the case) appealed the information requests sent out by the Commission. As explained in the Judgment, as part of the judicial proceedings in our specific case we managed to have access to, and to exceptionally lodge observations on, the Commission’s evidence at a pre-SO phase (for my comments on these Judgments, click here). Some parties appealed the General Court Judgments (not all, for, understandably, practical realities often trump theoretical interest) and the ECJ may say interesting things, so keep an eye open for those.
–The news: On August 13 the U.S Federal Trade Commission issued a Statement of Enforcement Principles that will guide its application of Section 5 of the FTC Act, a provision against “unfair methods of competition” that goes beyond the prohibitions in the Sherman or Clayton Acts. Essentially, the FTC has committed to align the enforcement of Section 5 with that of the Sherman Act, effectively adopting a rule of reason analytical framework. Comment 1: the Statement explains that the FTC is “less likely to challenge an act or practice as an unfair method of competition on a standalone basis if enforcement of the Sherman or Clayton Act is sufficient to address the competitive harm”. Well, isn’t that stating the obvious? Also, the language (“is less likely”) shows some convergence at both sides of the Atlantic when it comes to sort-of-soft law: the FTC seems to have learnt from DG Comp’s guidance in this respect… Comment 2: I always thought that Section 5 was the U.S. way of making up for a sometimes inconvenient strict interpretation of the antitrust rules that does not cover practices that could be challenged with a wider, also sensible interpretation. Just to give you to examples: the Ethyl case, concerning a Section 5 challenge against facilitating practices could perhaps have been brought under Section 2 if US antitrust law had a notion of individual abuse of collective dominance like we do in the EU following the Irish Sugar Judgment. Also, the Intel case under Section 5 would seemingly also have been equally possible to challenge if we had a more nuanced approach to refusals to deal concerning interoperability.
–The news: Google’s lawyers didn’t rest during the holidays either. A few days ago Google sent its response to the Commission’s Statement of Objections (and its General Counsel wrote a blog post about it, available here). All this generated yet another news cycle; journalists don’t get tired of this story, as don’t lawyers, who keep jumping in at the smell of possible blood. The non-comment: We have no real new info on the case so we have no comment beyond the many written in the past.
And now, a quick look to the future and to some forthcoming events:
- On Friday, 4 September, the Liège Innovation and Competition Institute is holding, in Brussels, an interesting event on the Huawei/ZTE Judgment (for my hasty first comments and some interesting, more well thought-out comments by others, see here).
- On September 29 a new edition of the 9 month LL.M course will start at the Brussels School of Competition. Registrations are still open and the program is available here.
- And on Thursday 24 September ERA and the European Data Protection Supervisor will be hosting a must-attend event (at least for me since I’m chairing part of it) titled Competition Law rebooted: Enforcement and personal data in digital markets“. For more, see here.
On Competition Law and Technology + State aid
As you know, Pablo and myself -and Nico too- are quite involved in a Course on EU & Spanish Competition Law Course that I co-direct in Madrid with Luis Ortiz Blanco. Aside from being a great pretext for me to go home once in a while, the fact is that we are getting increasingly better at bringing good competition law action to Spain.
The two upcoming seminars are very good examples:
– On Thursday and Friday this week (5 and 6 March) we will be holding a seminar on State Aid coordinated by José Luis Buendía and Jorge Piernas which could hardly be better. I truly don’t think there’s a better way to learn all you need to know about State aid in 48 hours. In that time a list of top-notch speakers will cover all the essentials of State aid law as well as the most recent hot topics. Speakers include (by order of appearance): Jose Luis Buendía (Garrigues & King’s College London), Jorge Piernas (University of Murcia), Leigh Hancher (University of Tilburg), Piet Jan Slot (University of Leiden), Juan Arpio (University of Zaragoza), Deborah Heredia (Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Carlos Urraca (European Commission Legal Service), Joaquín Fernandez (DG Competition, European Commission), Alejandro Requejo (Compass Lexecon), Miguel García Caba (Spanish Professional Football League), Ramón Terol (University of Alicante), Juan Pedro Marín (SEPI); Elisabetta Righini (King’s College London), José Manuel Panero (Garrigues) and Patricia Vidal (Uría Menéndez). More info is available here.
12h –14h Competition, IP and technology
- Introduction to the EU copyright regime and to its reform, Eleonora Rosati, Lecturer, University of Southampton
- Copyright licensing and competition law – Pablo Ibañez Colomo, Associate Professor, LSE
- Competition law and IPR exhaustion– Alvaro Ramos, Legal Director, Cisco Systems
16h- 18.30h Competition law and distribution in the online world
- An introduction to competition law and online distribution- Donald Slater, Partner, Ashurst
- The economics of online distribution- Valérie Meunier, Vice-President, Compass Lexecon
- Emerging challenges for competition law in online distribution – Miguel Pérez Guerra, Competition Counsel EMEA, Google
- Emerging challenges for competition law in online distribution – Robert Mahnke, Global Competition Counsel, eBay
18.30h – 20h Setting the online playing field
- Competition law and online search- Thomas Graf, Partner, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilston
- The double duality of two-sided markets- Alfonso Lamadrid, Garrigues (yes, I’m repeating myself, but I have 3 Hearings in Luxembourg that week, and since I get to co-decide on the programme… 😉 )
- The fluctuation of substantive standards in high tech markets- Pablo Ibañez Colomo, Associate Professor, LSE
More info on this seminar (which will be conducted fully in English and under Chatham House Rules) is available here: Seminar Competition Law in the Technology Sector
The Double Duality of Two-Sided Markets
I’m typing live from the Swedish Competition Authority’s top-notch Pros and Cons conference, which in this 13th edition deals with the pros and cons of two-sided markets.
Despite the fact that the conference has been opened by myself and will be closed by Nicolas Petit, I promise this is a serious and highly reputed event.
In my intervention I have focused on what I’ve called the double duality of (practices carried out in) two-sided markets. A paper on the subject is in the pipeline (to be finished when work and baby allow), but most of the views I just developed are contained in this presentation (comments would be very welcome):
Lamadrid_The Double Duality of Two Sided Markets
Mixed Tidbits
-The talk of the town these days –as reflected in our most recent posts- is about “Lux leaks” and the uncomfortable position in which it places President Juncker, State aids and our victory in Court last week. But there’s a paradox regarding these cases that has surprisingly not received much attention: do people realize that if Luxembourg’s rulings were declared to constitute illegal State aid the result would be that Luxembourg would receive several thousands of millions of euros??
– This blog is intended not only for us to get things off our chest, but also to foster some debate. In this context, I would suggest you to read the most recent comments on this and this post. You won’t find that sort of discussions in many other places and this is what makes this blog different; we’re very fortunate to have such active and sapient readers and we probably don’t emphasize that enough.
– The comments I just referred to reveal that there are still a few open issues regarding, in particular, the concept of restrictions by object and on how they can avail themselves to objective justifications. For those interested in clarifications, we remind you about the forthcoming ERA event on the subject (Restrictions by Object after Cartes Bancaires and the Commission’s initiatives); for more info click here.
– Btw, for those needing clarification on a wider set of issues, we will soon be announcing the program of the 18TH edition of the Competition Law Course that Luis Ortiz Blanco and myself direct in Madrid from January to March, with the participation of, among many others, my former and my current blogging partners. If you are interested in attending or know of someone who might be, you can drop me a line (alfonso.lamadrid@garrigues.com). This course is, by the way, where I first met Nicolas, interestingly through the intermediation of his subsequent replacement on this blog, Pablo.
– Thanks to Competition Policy International we have found this piece at the intersection of competition law and religion titled Is there a Vatican School for Competition Policy? For the record, we were pioneers in writing on the link between religion and antitrust: see my (2010!) post on An Antitrust Challenge to God
– Our friend Stephen Ryan, now at the Hong Kong Competition Commission, has informed us about a new media campaign initiated by the authority to inform the general public about the benefits of competition (see here and here). We’ll add these to our list of candidates for the Antitrust Oscars. The authority is also active on other fronts, having just released draft guidelines on the interpretation of the Competition Ordinance for public consultation.
More details on the Commission’s competition competition + conferences
My inactivity on the blog this week has to do with a couple of Court deadlines and me finding my way through the intrincacies of fiscal rules, telecomm technicalities and trading jargon on different matters (ah, the renacentist life of the competition lawyer…). I’ll try to compensate for my non-posting guilt feeling with some advertising:
-Given that our previous post on the Commission’s new initiative for recruiting competition specialists seems to have attracted quite some interest, we thought that you would also be interested in the information published today regarding all details of the competition competition; if so, you can read all about it here.
-Many experts on EU Competition Procedure will be gathering in Brussels on 6-7 November at the Global Competition Law Centre’s 10th annual conference titled “10 years of Regulation 1/2003: challenges and reform“. The programme and all registration info are available here.
– The 9th Junior Competition Conference -set up by the editors of the Competition Law Journal and which we have always supported and gladly advertised- will be taking place on Friday 6 February 2015. It will have two themes: (1) The New Frontier: Competition Law and the Financial Services Sector; and (2) Control of Unilateral Conduct and the ‘Goldilocks’ Dilemma: Too Much, Too Little or Just Right? For details of the Call for Speakers, please visit this web page. If you would like to speak at the conference, please contact the organizers at competitionlawjournal@gmail.com by 21 November 2014 with an expression of interest and a short outline of your proposed topic.
More on Android
On Wednesday I very much enjoyed participating in an interesting panel on the Android investigation with Kristina Nordlander, Trevor Soames and Neil Dryden. We hold different views about it (I’ve motivated my skepticism here before) but it’s always a pleasure to debate with smart lawyers.
Our presentations are available here:
Lamadrid_Android (thanks to Miguel Angel Bolsa for the help!)
K. Nordlander – Android and Google Play
Trevor Soames_Android (this one contains a few references to this blog)
In my next conference appearance (at the Swedish Competition Authority’s Pros and Cons conference on Two-sided markets on 28 November; see here for the program and registration info) I’ll be accompanied by another reputed and esteemed jurist who also happened to found this blog.
In the press this week
On the tax-related State aid investigations. Many newspapers opened this week with big headlines on the alleged news that the Commission had adopted a “preliminary decision” regarding the State aid probe into Apple (see e.g. here). I’m a bit intrigued by what’s behind this press campaign; the only news is that the Commission has published in the Official Journal decisions that had already been adopted before the summer. This sort of publication is never news, so why the fuss about it now is beyond me.
[It is, by the way, interesting to observe how some developments are “sold” twice, whilst others –including the closure of infringement proceedings against luxury watch manufacturers– go under the radar (disclaimer/advertising: my firm represented one of the main companies subject to that investigation)].
Given that I’ve lately been working on loads of tax-related State aid cases before the General Court I’ve developed a particular interesting in these matters. We might comment more in-depth on them in the future; for the moment, I’ll simply point out that by questioning not national taxation systems or tax rulings in general but rather APAs (advance price agreements) the Commission might be opening Pandora’s box (how many multinationals –including many EU ones- have similar arrangements?; could all of those now be challenged under State aid rules? ) For my previous comments on these issues, see here.
On the Google search investigation. The Google case has been on the news again, which, paradoxically, is no news. It’s been a while since we last commented on this investigation (partly because there wasn’t anything substantial on which to comment, and partly because the susceptibility around these issues is quite acute). One of the main contributors to this blog –Pablo Ibañez Colomo- gave his views to Global Competition Review a few days ago; Pablo explained that “[i]t is very controversial to argue that, as a rule, article 102 [prohibiting abuse of dominant position] requires all dominant companies to give access to their facilities – including operating systems or search engines – on non-discriminatory terms and conditions (…) I do not believe there is case law supporting this understanding of the provision.” According to Pablo, “there is the expectation that remedies are justified even if it is not clear why Google’s conduct is illegal”.
Last time I wrote about the case I made some comments on the politicization of competition law enforcement (see here). Since then, Vice-President Almunia has explained that politics are being left aside of the case (here, ehem). So, politics aside, let me focus on a purely legal point without discussing who’s right or wrong:
The complainant’s interesting main legal argument now seems to be that Google’s proposed commitments do not address the concerns set out in the Commission’s preliminary assessment (see, e.g. here). This a most interesting claim, and one on which many –including myself- can’t really comment because we haven’t read the preliminary assessment. In fact, no one other than Google was supposed to have seen it (according to the Manual of Procedure, “the complainant has no right to a hearing or to receive a (non-confidential) copy of the Preliminary Assessment or to have access to information”). In this case, however, the Hearing Officer granted a request for access on the part of some of the complainants (see the previous hyperlink for a source).
Now, consider the future implications of this move: in the past the Commission could overdo a bit its concerns in its preliminary assessments because, after all, they are not subject to the same requirements as the SO, would not be subject to any rebuttal on the part of its addressee, unlike SOs do not need the approval of the Commission’s President and, at most, could give the Commission a stronger hand in commitment negotiations (which, regardless of what Alrosa says, obviously exist). Now that the Commission is aware of the fact that preliminary assessments will/could be accessed by complainants, will it have to show more self-restraint? Will this have an impact on future commitment negotiations? Would these problems be avoided if the Commission was required to adopt a proper SO prior to entering into commitment negotiations?
On Android. I also saw some headlines this week anticipating, once more, the initiation of a formal investigation into Android. As frequent readers will recall, I’ve already written quite extensively about this (see here). On October 15th (the same day in which, by the way, the Commission will be making public an avalanche of decisions…) I’ll be speaking about it at a conference in Brussels, so in case anyone has thoughts about the case feel free to send them my way.
On the Euribor probe and the role of the Ombudsman. Last week, the fact that Crédit Agricole had resorted to the Ombudsman to complain about a possible bias on the part of the Commission also hit the news. CA’s claim has to do with the Commission having adopted a settlement decision finding a cartel infringement in relation to the Euribor prior to concluding the infringement proceedings against those who chose not to settle (see Gaspard Sebag’s piece for Bloomberg here). This obviously raises most interesting procedural questions, which I’d nevertheless tend to think pertain more to the realm of judicial review than to the Ombudsman. The piece includes a quote of mine which is a candidate for the prize of ‘dullest comment of the year in the press’: “It’s always uncomfortable to have to deal with the Ombudsman”. A deep thought that is… 😉
ERA’s workshop- Exclusionary Pricing under Art. 102 TFEU: Impact of Recent Case Law
ERA (the Academy of European Law), with which we’ve collaborated a few times in the past, will be holding a competition workshop titled “Exclusionary Pricing under Art. 102 TFEU: Impact of Recent Case Law”.
It will feature our friend Damien Gerard (who, by the way, has succeeded Nicolas as Director of the Global Competition Law Centre), our first Friday Slotee Ian Forrester (he’s actually the one who proposed the Friday Slot name), and Manuel Kellerbauer, from the Commission’s Legal Service.
Judging by the absurdly high number of click-troughs to Wouter Wils’ now famous piece on Intel and the effects based approach that we’ve seen on this blog in the past couple of days, we guess that this event might be of interest to many of you…
For more info, click here.
P.S. The fact that this posts gets me a free pass for one of our most recent hires (Sam Villiers, you’re welcome) is merely incidental 😉
The ultimate discussion on Commitment decisions in EU Competition Law
If you want to know everything about the use of commitment decision in EU Competition Law…
Conflicts of Interest in EU Competition Law
It’s been two months since Nicolas temporarily left this blog for a half a year stint at DG Comp’s Private Enforcement Unit.
In the course of this short period he’s managed to single handedly unblock negotiations on the Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Antitrust Damages, and he’s adapted very well to the fonctionnaire lifestyle (meaning that he’s now taking some days of holidays) 😉 (jokes aside, congrats to Eddy de Smijter and to the rest of the people involved in the negotiations about the Directive).
As he anticipated in his farewell post, Nico is maintaining all academic activities. Within that context, he’ll soon be participating at a conference on one of is favorite topics organized by his University. So, on 24 April the Liège Competition and Innovation Institute will be hosting a conferece in Brussels on Conflicts of Interest, Ethical Rules and Impartiality in EU Competition Policy .
Although Nicolas knows that I don’t share the same passion for the topic (or maybe precisely because he does?), he’s asked me to advertise the conference here. So voilà. It will feature representatives from the General Court, the European Commission, the OECD, the Belgian Competition Authority, as well as lawyers in private practice, The New York Times’ Brussels correspondent and ULG Professors and Researches, including Nico himself. Even Emilly O’Reilly (the current Ombudsman, whom you may remember from this) is on the tentative list of speakers.
Why do I say I don’t share the passion for the issue? Because whereas some improvements could possibly be made in the rules -mainly regarding their transparency-, I think we should be careful in not overshooting the mark. Otherwise we’d risk creating the impression that there’s a major endemic problem where I’m not at all sure there’s one (I, for one, I’m much more concerned about the Commission’s recruitment processes and about internal rules that oblige experienced people to rotate jobs too often or too soon). Anyone working in Brussels for some time will have worked with, against and before friends or professional acquaintances (sometimes the line is drawn too thinly). In my experience who you have on the other side doesn’t matter (at least for good: I do know of situations where lawyers’ friends deciding on cases have been unnecessarily harsh on them just to make a point and dispel any concerns, and that’s as unfair as the contrary) and there are enough checks and balances to avoid problems. The only positive consequence of working before people who know you is that they will perhaps trust you, provided that you have never proved not worthy of that trust (and competition law practice is also a game of repeated interactions), but I don’t see what’d be wrong about that.
As I told Nico back when he wrote his controversial piece on this subject, what’s different in our field is that our “relevant market” is very narrow; we’re not so many lawyers/economists repeatingly interacting among us and with the same academics, officials and judges. The only solution to the perceived problem, as framed, would be to have virginal public officials and lawyers who have not moved around jobs, who know no one, who haven’t studied at the same places, who haven’t worked with different people and who haven’t established a personal rapport with those in their field. In my view, at least, in that case the cure (assuming it were feasible, quod non) would be worse than the disease.
That said, considering the speaker line-up I’ve no doubt the conference will be most interesting.
Chillin'Competition 