Competitive Edge: Competition & EU law news - January 2020

Ad blocking software - conflicting priorities on a two-sided market and competitive concerns

In contrast to the courts of instance, the German Federal Supreme Court assumed a two-sided market in its recent decision on advertising blocker software. This ruling opens the door for an antitrust assessment, in particular as regards a potential market dominant position of the ad blocker providers and the balancing of interests between those providers, the operators of advertising financed websites and consumers.

Read more > 

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Bird & Bird news

• Paris Competition partner interviewed by French Parliament Commission
• Upcoming speaking engagements at Competition & EU law conferences

 

Updates from our network:

EU
Approval of the 2nd Important Project of Common European Interest

Australia
Volkswagen ordered to pay record penalty for breaching Australia's consumer laws

Belgium
Belgian Court disagrees on the calculation of the fine against an association of undertakings

Czech Republic
CZK 10 mission fine imposed on the collective rights management organisation OSA for abuse of dominant position

Denmark
Danish High Court finds distributor guilty of illegal resale price maintenance 

Finland
While the definition of a lottery is being reviewed in Court, two fantasy sports games may continue to operate

France
EUR 150 million fine for BigTech company for abuse of dominance

Germany
Telekom and EWE are allowed to set up the joint venture "Glasfaser Nordwest" for the joint expansion of a fiber optic network

Hungary
Bid rigging in healthcare equipment tenders receives fines of EUR 4.8 million

Italy
The Italian Supreme Administrative Court rules that agreements for technical services ancillary to the provision of unbundled fixed telecommunications lines should be re-assessed

Poland
The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection opens an investigation into Allegro's possible anti-competitive practices

Spain
More on the Truck cartel case: Spanish Court refuses to hold a subsidiary responsible for damages caused by its parent company

The Netherlands
Final judgment by highest Dutch administrative court in flour cartel case

UK
The CAT largely upholds CMA finding of substantial lessening of competition in Tobii/Smartbox merger

 

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EU

Approval of the 2nd Important Project of Common European Interest

In the beginning of December, the European Commission approved an Important Project of Common European Interest ("IPCEI") to support research and innovation in the battery value chain. The project, which has a funding capacity of up to €3.2 billion, was jointly notified by Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden.

The Commission assessed the proposed project under the specific EU State aid rules for IPCEIs. The rules have a specific provision for Member States to fund disruptive and ambitious research and development, as well as the first industrial deployment of the technology. IPCEI's aim to bridge the gap where private initiatives often fail to materialise because the succumb to one of the significant risks these types of project entail. This was only the second time such a project was approved; the first one, concerning microelectronics, was approved in 2018.

In order to qualify for support under the IPCEI Communication, a project must fulfil several criteria. One of those criteria is to contribute to strategic EU objectives. The battery project is extremely timely given the Commission's push for a European Green Deal, in particular its initiatives concerning clean and low emission mobility. The project should also generate positive spill-over effects across the EU and involve private financing by its beneficiaries, including BASF, Solvay, BMW, Varta, SEEL. In this case the direct beneficiaries have an obligation to share the results of the project with the European scientific community and industry in order to develop a European battery ecosystem. Moreover, the aid is coupled with a clawback mechanism, which ensures that extra revenues generated by the beneficiaries will be partly returned to the respective Member States.

The IPCEI on batteries has been presented as an example of the initiatives which will be undertaken in the future as part of Europe's industrial strategy, which, in Commissioner Vestager's words, "must be green, fit for the digital age and based on fair competition".  The objective is to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050; the Green Deal presented by the European Commission on 11 December 2019 features a roadmap setting out the necessary steps to make this a reality. The battery alliance, bundling the efforts of several Member States to innovate an entire value chain, from raw materials to recycling phase, is being regarded as a model for using existing competition rules in a more flexible way to meet the Green Deal targets.

For more information please refer to the Commission's press release here.

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Australia

Volkswagen ordered to pay record penalty for breaching Australia's consumer laws

In December 2019, the Federal Court ordered the German car manufacturer, Volkswagen AG, to pay AUD$125 million in penalties for engaging in a breach of Australia's consumer law (the Australian Consumer Law ("ACL")) by making false representations relating to its compliance with Australian diesel emissions standards. This is the highest penalty ever ordered by the Federal Court for a breach of the ACL.

The relevant conduct - which came to be known globally as 'dieselgate' - involved Volkswagen failing to disclose to Australian regulators, the existence of certain software (known as 'Two Mode' software) in its vehicles for imports between 2011 and 2015.

This software enabled the vehicles to produce a lower level of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions during testing compared to when the same vehicles were being driven on the road. In this way, Volkswagen falsely represented that its vehicles were in compliance with Australia's standards for exhaust emissions when in actual fact, the vehicles did not comply with the standards when driven on the road.

The penalty imposed by the Federal Court is significant and follows a strengthening of the penalty provisions available to courts under the ACL, which came into effect in late 2018. Maximum penalties are now the higher of a $10 million fine, three times the value of the profit or benefit received, or, if this cannot be calculated, 10% of the company's annual turnover. 

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Belgium

Belgian Court disagrees on the calculation of the fine against an association of undertakings

In a judgment dated 8 January 2020, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Belgian Competition Authority ("BCA") in which it imposed a fine on the Order of Pharmacists for excluding Medi-Market from the market for pharmacy services (see July edition of Competitive Edge). The Court, however, did order that the BCA to amend the fine it imposed substantially. 

The Court decided that the BCA's finding that the behaviour of the Order of Pharmacies could be considered a general strategy to exclude Medi-Market from the market for pharmacy services was not manifestly unreasonable. Moreover, the Court confirmed that the Order of Pharmacists could not invoke its public interest role to defend the traditional pharmacy model as opposed to the new model as developed by Medi-Market.

The Court, however, did concur with the arguments of the Order of Pharmacists concerning the calculation of the fine which had been imposed. The BCA calculated the fine on the basis of the turnover of the member-pharmacies of the Order of Pharmacists in Belgium. However, Article IV.70 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law, which was applicable at the time, stated that fines imposed by the BCA could not exceed 10% of the turnover of undertakings or associations of undertakings. Therefore, according to the Court, the BCA did not have a legal basis for using the turnover of the Belgian pharmacies instead of the turnover of the Order of Pharmacies itself, even if in its Guidelines on the calculation of the fine the BCA did refer to the European Commission's fining guidelines which set out that "where the infringement by an association of undertakings relates to the activities of its members, the value of sales will generally correspond to the sum of the value of sales by its members." In the new Competition Act of 2 May 2019, the legislator added a provision resolving this anomaly, with the BCA now permitted to take into account the sum of the turnover of each member of an association of undertakings.

The Court has referred the case back to the BCA in order to determine the final size of the fine.

Please find the relevant press release here.

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Czech Republic

CZK 10 mission fine imposed on the collective rights management organisation OSA for abuse of dominant position

In a first-instance decision, the Office for the Protection of Competition ("Office") imposed a fine amounting to CZK 10,676,000 on the collective rights management organisation, Ochranný svaz autorský pro práva k dílům hudebním ("OSA"), for an abuse of a dominant position. The decision has been appealed.

OSA violated both the Czech Competition Act and EU competition rules by imposing inadequate conditions on accommodation facilities which had looked to acquire licenses to make copyrighted works available  to guests in their bedrooms via radio or television between 2008 and 2014.

OSA failed to take into consideration whether or not a room was occupied. Therefore, the operators of accommodation facilities had to pay for licenses even when a room was not occupied. It should be noted that the occupancy of rooms was a previously a relevant criteria for calculating royalties up until May 2008. Therefore, the exclusion of this criterion from the royalty calculation appears to have been done with a view to maximising the total amount of royalties collected from accommodation facility providers.

The Office has found that the requirement to pay royalties even in cases where the copyrighted material could not have been used by the license holder, i. e. when the room was not occupied and therefore no consideration was provided, cannot be seen as an adequate condition as it does not fulfil the proportionality requirement.

Given that OSA represents foreign rights holders also, the Office considered that trade between Member States had been affected.

Please find the relevant press release here.

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Denmark

Danish High Court finds distributor guilty of illegal resale price maintenance

On 10 December 2019, the Danish High Court found that the Danish company, Icon Hairspa A/S, was guilty of illegal resale price maintenance by dictating the minimum resale price of certain hair products for their retailers. 

From 2016 to 2017, Icon Hairspa required that all retailers ought to comply with certain minimum resale prices for the hair products when reselling to consumers. As a result, competition was restricted, because there was no longer any price competition between the retailers, which ultimately led to consumers paying a higher price for the products.

The Danish High Court concluded that the conduct by which Icon Hairspa restricted the resale prices infringed the Danish Competition Act. Consequently, Icon Hairspa was fined DKK 1 million (EUR 134,000). In addition to the imposition of a fine on the distributor itself, a fine of DKK 100.000 (EUR 13,400) was also imposed on an executive employee at Icon Hairspa. When determining the amount of the fines, special attention was paid to the significance and duration of the infringement and to the distributor's revenue. 

For more information, please refer to the decision from the Danish High Court available in Danish here.
 

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Finland

While the definition of a lottery is being reviewed in Court, two fantasy sports games may continue to operate

The Finnish gambling market is one of the most regulated in Europe; state-owned Veikkaus Oy has the exclusive right to provide gambling services in Finland. The Lotteries Act (1047/2001) stipulates that the definition of a lottery is fulfilled when an activity includes three elements: a charge for participation, chance, and a prize of monetary value. The court case relates to fantasy sports games, where the aim is to put together a virtual hockey team. Players earn points and money depending on how the selected players succeed in real hockey matches.

Compliance with the Lotteries Act is monitored by the National Police Board of Finland, which considered that in such fantasy games, the prize is at least partly based on chance, as even a skilful player cannot know how future events will pan out in advance. According to the National Police Board, the games also met the definition of gambling, as they involved cash prizes. According to the Government Proposal of the Lotteries Act, although fantasy sports games are expert games, there are always unpredictable circumstances in real-world events, whereby the prize always partly depends on chance. The National Police Board prohibited the operation of these games and imposed conditional fines of EUR 300,000.

The decision was appealed to Helsinki Administrative Court, which allowed the game organisers to continue their existing fantasy sports operations for the time being. It will be interesting to see how the Administrative Court will interpret the Lotteries Act, amended in 2017. The oldest of these fantasy hockey games has been in operation since 1995 and had around 35,000 players in recent years. The legality of the game has been questioned in criminal proceedings in the past, but a decision not to prosecute was issued in 2010. By amending the Lotteries Act, Finland sought to maintain its gambling monopoly; this case appears to show a tightened approach from Finland's supervisory authority at minimum. 

We will keep you informed about any future developments. Meanwhile, please find the National Police Board's press release here (in Finnish).

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France

EUR 150 million fine for BigTech company for abuse of dominance

On 19 December 2019, the French Competition Authority ("FCA") fined Google for abusing its dominant position in the French search advertising market. The decision follows a complaint from Gibmedia (a company which publishes weather information, company data and telephone information) after Google suspended its Google Ads account (formerly AdWords) without notice.

The FCA considered that the rules adopted by the BigTech Company for the functioning of its online advertising platform were non-objective, non-transparent and discriminatory. In particular, the FCA found that these rules were opaque, unclear and subject to many changes without the advertisers being informed, which placed them in a situation of legal and economic insecurity. The FCA also considered that these rules were applied in a discriminatory manner given that several advertisers' accounts and websites were suspended while others with similar content were not.

Given that these practices may have discouraged the development of innovative websites and in particular low-visibility websites for which paid referencing services are key, the FCA  decided to fine the BigTech company EUR 150 million and ordered it (i) to clarify its operating rules as well as the procedure for suspending advertisers' accounts and (ii) to implement measures to prevent, detect and address violations of such operating rules within six months.

The full text of the FCA’s decision is not yet available on its website but it will be published there at a later stage. For more information, the FCA’s press release is available here.

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Germany

Telekom and EWE are allowed to set up the joint venture "Glasfaser Nordwest" for the joint expansion of a fiber optic network

The German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) has cleared the plans of Telekom Deutschland GmbH and EWE AG to jointly expand and operate fiber-optic networks in parts of North West Germany. This is a landmark decision by the FCO in relation to the expansion of fiber optic networks in Germany, something which has attracted a lot of political support given that the cooperation between the involved network operators could serve as a model for future network expansion joint-ventures in the country.

The decision of the FCO of 30 December 2019 (B 7 – 21/18) finally enables the companies involved to push forward with the capital-intensive expansion of a fiber optic network which is required to make gigabit internet access available for end customers. Nevertheless, in advance of the final merger control clearance, the FCO had already examined the intended cooperation under cartel prohibition provisions but it closed the proceedings after the involved parties accepted extensive commitments. More specifically, the companies committed to a substantial investment without public funding to upgrade at least 300,000 high speed internet connections in the concerned area (which includes also some rural areas) within the next four years. This is considerably more than was originally planned for the project. In addition, the companies are obliged to grant competing internet providers (who do not have an own network infrastructure) access to their joint fiber optic network and to offer required wholesale products "without discrimination" – enabling them to provide competing internet services to end customers located in the concerned regions. Furthermore, the two companies must continue to participate independently of each other with regard to tenders where network expansion is governmentally subsided due to a lack of profitability – i.e. in rural areas. 

According to the President of the FCO Andreas Mundt, "the cooperation will lead to significant improvements on the telecommunications markets in the affected region and also in rural areas". The joint-venture is expected to bring about rapid network expansion and hasten the improvements in the supply of with high bandwidths to households. 

Further information with regard to the merger control clearance can be found in the FCO’s press release here (in German and English). Information regarding the parties’ commitments can be found in the FCO’s press release here (in German and English) as well as in its closing decision here (in German). 

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Hungary

Bid rigging in healthcare equipment tenders receives fines of EUR 4.8 million

The Hungarian Competition Authority (''GVH'') fined several undertakings which were found to have shared amongst themselves the EU-funded public procurement tenders for diagnostic imaging (MRI, CT and X-ray) equipment in Hungary in 2015. The total fine amounts to EUR 4.8 million, with GE Hungary Kft., Premier G. Med. Kft., and Euromedic Technology Kft. receiving the largest fines of EUR 1 million, EUR 933,300, and EUR 900,000 respectively.

Two individuals, one from Chemium Kft. and another from VMD Zrt., facilitated and coordinated the bid rigging cartel, claiming that they had insider information regarding the tenders and influence over the process, as well as claiming that they had the necessary funds available. Amongst others, the concerned undertakings took part in the drafting of the specifications for the tenders, in most cases resulting in the exclusion of all but one product. Although all market players must have been aware of the over-specifications, none of the tender procedures were challenged. Further, the undertakings concerned shared information and colluded in creating their bidding strategy, splitting up the tenders amongst themselves with the aim of preserving the actual market shares.

Mediszer Kft. applied for leniency first and thus was granted immunity from a fine. Siemens Healthcare Kft. also submitted a leniency application and reached a settlement with the GVH thus as a combined result, the GVH decreased its fines by 70%. Several other undertakings engaged in settlement proceedings with the GVH and received significant fine reductions.

You can find the GVH decision (VJ/19/2016) here (in Hungarian) and GVH press release here (in English) and here (in Hungarian).

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Italy

The Italian Supreme Administrative Court rules that agreements for technical services ancillary to the provision of unbundled fixed telecommunications lines should be re-assessed

On 23 December, the Italian Supreme Administrative Court ("Consiglio di Stato") accepted the appeals lodged by several companies active in the supply of technical ancillary services and the incumbent network owner, Telecom Italia S.p.A., against the rulings of the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio (“TAR”), which had confirmed the decision of the Italian Competition Authority (the “ICA”) taken on 16 December 2015.

In this decision, the ICA had ascertained that the investigated companies, active in the supply of technical ancillary services, supported by the incumbent network owner, restricted competition and prevented the development of disaggregated forms of supply of ancillary technical services. The ICA focused on alleged price coordination in relation to ancillary services (such as those for repair, maintenance and line activations) in the wholesale fixed telecom lines market. The context of the investigation was the newly liberalised market created in Italy by legislative reforms adopted in February 2012, which introduced the unbundling of technical ancillary services for wholesale access to the fixed telecoms network.

According to Italian Supreme Administrative Court, the ICA's decision was grounded on a deficient investigation and assessment, which were wrongly endorsed by the Court of first instance. In particular, the Supreme Administrative Court challenged the imputability of the contested conducts sic et simpliciter to the scheme of a restriction of competition ‘by object’, which must be interpreted restrictively with due regard for the burden of proof. With its decision, the Court underlined that in accordance with the European case-law, in order to assess whether coordination between undertakings is by nature harmful to the proper functioning of normal competition, an in-depth analysis of the context would have been necessary, specifically one that assesses the suitability of the conduct to distort competition in a market which was still not completely liberalized, such as that in which the contested conduct has been carried out.

The Supreme Administrative Court therefore referred to the ICA a new assessment of the contested conduct which, excluding the same conclusions and deficiencies, could range from a closure of the case to an appropriate reduction of the fines imposed.

For more information please find the Supreme Administrative Court in Italian here.

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Poland

The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection opens an investigation into Allegro's possible anti-competitive practices

Following the inspection conducted by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection ("UOKiK") in Allegro in July 2017, UOKiK has opened an antimonopoly investigation into Allegro's practices that may violate both Polish and EU competition law.

In its press release, UOKiK notes that Allegro has a dual role as an e-commerce platform, as it operates the platform and also sells products as a retailer. Thus, Allegro competes with other retailers on its platform, in particular through its own online shop known as the Official Allegro Shop.

UOKiK also states that Allegro is the most popular online shopping platform in Poland and that 79% of consumers prefer to buy products from Allegro rather than from other e-commerce sites (Kantar's survey conducted in 2019 at UOKiK's request).

UOKiK is therefore investigating whether Allegro abuses its dominant position by favouring its own sales over the sales of other retailers on the platform. UOKiK notes that such practices "could have adversely affected the competitive situation of independent online shops whose products may have been less visible on the platform and less frequently chosen by consumers". In particular, UOKiK refers to the following practices:

• Allegro might have used information on the platform’s operation, including the relevancy algorithm, unavailable to other retailers, to better the position of its own offers in the search results;
  
  
• Allegro might have used exclusive promotional banners and exclusive sales or promotional features to increase interest in its own offers. For instance, consumers searching for a product via search engines could have been suggested to go only to the Official Allegro Shop.

In its press release, UOKiK explicitly refers to the European Commission's decision in Google Shopping (Case AT.39740) and its investigation into Amazon's practices.

Nevertheless, UOKiK will need to balance protecting platform transparency and platform competitiveness against protecting independent online shops operating on the platform. It will also need to consider the fact that Allegro's practices may not result in any appreciable reduction of competition as the Official Allegro Shop generates less than 1% of the total sales from Allegro’s platform.

UOKiK's press release of 10th December 2019 is available in English here.

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Spain

More on the Truck cartel case: Spanish Court refuses to hold a subsidiary responsible for damages caused by its parent company

On 5 December 2019, the Provincial Court of Valencia upheld the appeal lodged by MAN Truck & Bus Iberia S.A. (a Spanish subsidiary of the worldwide truck producer MAN) against the Judgment of a lower court admitting the possibility to claim for damages from the Spanish subsidiary where the European Commission's decision was only addressed to the parent company.

The Provincial Court of Valencia has now rejected this possibility, arguing instead in favour of the principle of personal liability. The Court has affirmed that there is no evidence of MAN's Spanish subsidiary participation in the truck cartel case as its role was only that of a distributor of the trucks for Spain.

As explained in the November edition of our Competition Newsletter, Spanish Courts have so far drawn contradictory conclusions on this matter.

The European Court of Justice ("ECJ") shall give a definitive answer to this debate in the near future, as the Provincial Court of Barcelona has submitted a reference for a preliminary ruling (Case 9370/2019) to throw light on the following issues:

• If the principle of economic unity allows for an extension of the liability over the subsidiary for the infringements of its parent company;
• If this is possible, what conditions must be fulfilled to assert it; and
• If provisions of national law which only allow for an extension of the liability over the parent companies for the infringements of their subsidiaries – without allowing the reverse case – are compatible with EU law.

For more information, please find the judgment from the Provincial Court of Valencia here (in Spanish).

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The Netherlands

Final judgment by highest Dutch administrative court in flour cartel case

On 28 November 2019 the highest administrative court in The Netherlands (het College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven, "CBb") issued its final judgment in the flour cartel case. CBb has previously on 19 March 2019 issued an interlocutory ruling in this case.

The Dutch competition authority ("ACM") considered in its cartel fine decision that German flour producer Gebr. Engelke was incorporated as a German Kommanditgesellschaft (similar to a limited partnership) and on this basis, the ACM also held the general partners liable for the cartel infringement committed by Gebr. Engelke.

However, in its interlocutory judgment of 19 March 2019, the CBb ruled that the ACM could not establish decisive influence by the general partners (solely) on the basis of the civil liability of the general partners as the parties correctly argued that decisive influence was exercised differently under German law and the applicable Kommanditgesellschaft agreement. Consequently, the CBb concluded that the ACM did not correctly apply the principle of parental liability as established by EU law and ordered the ACM to repair this error within three months.

According to the press release by the ACM, the CBb ruled in its final judgment on 28 November 2019 that the ACM can only attribute the fine to the company and not to the general partners. As a result, the ACM is only allowed to collect the fine from the company. It is not possible for the ACM or one of the parties to appeal this judgment. Please find the ACM press release in Dutch on the final CBb judgment here (the judgment itself is not yet published).  

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UK

The CAT largely upholds CMA finding of substantial lessening of competition in Tobii/Smartbox merger 

In September 2019, the Competition Markets Authority ("CMA") found that Tobii's acquisition of Smartbox resulted in or may result in a substantial lessening of competition in the UK assistive communication technology market and ordered Tobii to divest Smartbox. Tobii consequently appealed the CMA's decision to the Competition Appeal Tribunal ("CAT") on the following five grounds:

• The CMA breached its duty of procedural fairness by refusing to disclose relevant evidence (ground 1);
• The CMA committed material errors when collecting evidence (ground 2);
• The CMA failed to properly define the relevant market for augmentative and assistive communication solutions (ground 3);
• The CMA’s finding of a substantial lessening of competition as a result of horizontal unilateral effects was not supported by evidence (ground 4); and
• The CMA’s finding of a substantial lessening of competition as a result of vertical input foreclosure effects and vertical customer foreclosure effects was based on an error of law and not supported by evidence (ground 5).

In January 2020, the CAT handed down its judgment unanimously finding Tobii failed on the first four grounds of appeal. However, the CAT partly found in Tobii’s favour in relation to the fifth ground by quashing the CMA’s decision to the extent that it had failed to provide sufficient evidence that the deal would result in vertical input foreclosure effects.

Although the CAT’s judgment is unclear as to what impact this finding will have on the rest of the CMA’s decision, the CMA is of the opinion that the judgment does not affect the core finding that Tobii must sell Smartbox to an approved purchaser.

Click here for a link to the CAT's judgment.

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Paris Competition partner interviewed by French Parliament Commission

Paris competition partner Thomas Oster provided his expert opinion to the European Affairs Commission of the French Parliament in relation to potential improvements of EU competition law in the context of the global economy.

The report (in French), issued at the beginning of December, was commissioned by the French Parliament in the context of claims that the current EU competition rules do not adequately protect the interests of European companies by failing to take into account competitive threats from foreign companies, in particular, publicly subsidised Chinese companies, as illustrated by the prohibition of the Siemens/Alstom merger.

The parliamentary commission interviewed representatives of companies, public authorities and competition law experts. Thomas was one of the two private practitioners interviewed by the commission.

Thomas said: "It is a great privilege to have been given the opportunity to share thoughts with the French lawmaker and contribute to the current reflection on possible improvements of competition law".

Please feel free to get in touch with Thomas Oster for more information about the report. 

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Upcoming speaking engagements at Competition & EU law conferences

• Want to learn more about the interplay between Data Protection & Competition law? Join Competition partner Anne Federle and Data Protection partner Benoit Van Asbroeck for a webinar on 28 January hosted by OneTrust DataGuidance. They will explore three case studies on data access claims under competition law and data privacy requirements. For more information and to register click here.

• Partner José Rivas will present on Aftermarket restraints and data: towards a novel approach? At the GCLC 15th Annual Conference on 30 January in Brussels.

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Don't miss the next GCR TMT Live conference in London on March 2, where our Competition partner Hein Hobbelen will join the panel discussing Competition issues in marketplaces, self-preferencing and the use of MFNs. In-house and governmental representative tickets are complimentary.

Key topics of the conference:

• Online Advertising
• Competition issues in marketplaces, self-preferencing and the use of MFNs
• This House believes that remedies in antitrust and mergers are ineffective: What are the options?
• Is antitrust law and regulation in the EU and US up to the task in the digital sector?