In this blog post, we take a closer look at the merger control year of 2022 in Sweden and the cases that caught the Swedish Competition Authority’s (“SCA”) attention. 2022 in numbers In 2022, the SCA received 117 merger filings. While this was a slight decrease compared to the record breaking 135 no...
On 6 February 2023, the European Commission (the Commission) published a Draft Implementing Regulation for the application of the Regulation on Foreign Subsidies (FSR). The FSR, which entered into force on 12 January 2023, allows the Commission to screen non-EU government subsidies. The FSR requires...
In a recent preliminary ruling regarding Unilever, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) reaffirms the position taken in Intel, declaring that a national competition authority (NCA) cannot disregard claims that an exclusivity scheme is incapable of producing anticompetitive effects. The e...
In the context of the common agricultural policy reform for 2023-2027, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted in 2021 a new exclusion from the EU competition rules for agricultural products. The Commission has now published a draft proposal for sustainability agreement...
On 1 December 2022 the Swedish Competition Authority (the “SCA”) adopted a decision finding that the prohibition against anticompetitive agreements had been infringed by two undertakings in the sanitation sector. This marks the second time that the SCA has used its recently granted power to impose c...
While Articles 101 and 102 TFEU are the same as in the early days of European cooperation, the rules governing their application are constantly adapted to changes in society and market behaviour. These last couple of years, the European Commission has been more active than ever, adopting new regulat...
The area of EU and competition law is in constant motion. Both the EU legislators and courts make sure that this field of law is developing at high speed. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to keep up to date with the latest developments in this area. At the same time, many of these dev...
Recent Rulings from the EU Courts in Qualcomm, Optical Disk Drives and Google Android Show That Failure to Respect the Parties’ Defence Rights May Come at a High Price. In recent years, there has been much talk of ‘due process’ and of ensuring a fair and impartial case handling by competition author...
It is now a year since the Swedish Act on the Prohibition of Unfair Trading Practices in the Purchase of Agricultural and Food Products (the so-called UTP Act, Sw. ”lagen om förbud mot otillbörliga handelsmetoder vid köp av jordbruks- och livsmedelsprodukter”) entered into force on 1 November 2021....
The Swedish Competition Authority (SCA) has on 20 october 2022 adopted it first own decision on competition fines. The SCA has only had the right to issue competition fines since March 2021, and the recent decision is the first where it uses its new powers. Due to the low turnover of the parties and...
On 30 June 2022, the European Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement on the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) which will allow the European Commission (the Commission) to screen non-EU government subsidies. On 28 November 2022, the FSR was formally adopted following the Counc...
The Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 12 October 2022 and enters into force on 1 November 2022. The DMA starts to apply from 2 May 2023, at which point the European Commission will start designating undertakings as gatekeepers. Once an underta...