Competition Law in Europe

On September 16, 2026, European Commission President von der Leyen opened her annual State of the Union address with the warning that “[a] fight for industrial capacities is shaping global competition“. Her speech indicated how the European Commission intends to respond to concerns about European competitiveness and economic security. Those priorities already appear in reforms and proposals such as the Draft Merger Guidelines and the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (“Draft IAA”), alongside broader changes to foreign investment screening across the EU. The address therefore offers a useful guide to the considerations likely to shape EU merger control, competition enforcement and Member State investment screening. This post distils the implications for investors and businesses active in the EU.

Key Points

  • Competitiveness, resilience and economic security will shape EU merger control to some degree, as reflected in the Draft Merger Guidelines’ focus on scale, innovation and security of supply, as well as competition enforcement and foreign investment screening.
  • Foreign investment policy will continue to scrutinise strategic sectors and technologies—including AI, semiconductors, critical minerals, energy and defence—while enabling partnerships that build capacity, diversify supply chains and strengthen resilience.
  • Trusted international partnerships will increasingly shape foreign investment assessments, with greater weight on investors’ jurisdictions and strategic alignment with EU industrial policy.
  • Climate change and AI are identified as “tipping points” driving regulatory focus across sectors including energy and water infrastructure, agriculture and food, health, transport, advanced manufacturing, and defence and space.
Continue Reading President von der Leyen’s 2026 State of the Union Address – Decoding the Competition and Foreign Investment Implications

Introduction

In the space of just one week, the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”), delivered two important judgments that clarify the scope of sport rule-making activities that can benefit from an antitrust exemption: the ROGON judgment on 9 July 2026, and the much more detailed RRC Sports judgment on 16 July 2026, which builds on and develops ROGON.  The sporting rules at play in these cases concerned football players’ agents, and more specifically those adopted by the German Football Association (ROGON judgment), and FIFA (RRC Sports judgment).  However, the principles set out in the ROGON and RRC Sports judgments will resonate beyond sport arenas to find potential application to rule-making by self-regulatory bodies in other sectors. 

Key Takeaways

  • The EU’s so-called ‘Meca Medina’ antitrust exemption can cover rules destined to ensure a league’s proper operation.  The ECJ recognizes that sports leagues operate as “ecosystems” and inevitably will need to adopt restrictions to ensure the proper functioning of such ecosystems.  It implies that the specificities of professional sport, where driven by public policy considerations, may justify exempting activities that would otherwise remain caught by the EU antitrust laws (Article 101 TFEU).
  • The Meca Medina antitrust exemption can apply to any part of these “ecosystems”.  The ECJ confirms that this exemption is not confined to league rules governing its members (aka clubs and players); it can also apply to league rules governing services rendered by other participants in the ecosystem, such as agents.
  • Determining whether a sporting rule qualifies for the Meca Medina antitrust exemption requires an individual assessment.  The ECJ looks at each agent-related rule or set of rules regulating the same aspect to determine whether it restricted competition by its very object and, if not, could meet the other conditions to get immunity from the EU antitrust laws.  In conducting this assessment, the ECJ gives a strong steer that most of the agent rules at play should not constitute “by object” restrictions and therefore could qualify for Meca Medina immunity.   
  • The Meca Medina antitrust exemption can only apply to sporting rules that pursue a public interest objective, making it critical to identify the dividing line between purely commercial objectives and public interest objectives.  That said, the exemption can apply to dual-faced sporting rules, namely rules that pursue both a public interest and a commercial objectives.      
  • The Meca Medina antitrust exemption is not limited to the rules on restrictive agreements (Article 101 TFEU) – it can also apply to single firm conduct (Article 102 TFEU) and restrictions to the EU free movement rules.  In the wake of its Superleague judgment, the ECJ aligns the analytic framework across both Article 101 and Article 102 TFEU.  The ECJ also confirms that this alignment extends to the EU free movement rules, such that the Meca Medina antitrust exemption can exempt impediments to the freedom to provide services protected by Article 56 TFEU.
Continue Reading ROGON and RRC Sports: The EU’s Top Court vindicates a pragmatic application of the antitrust sporting exemption to players’ agent regulations

For more than twenty years, FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (“RSTP”) have sought to balance the stability of football teams with player mobility. That balance was fundamentally challenged by the European Court of Justice (“ECJ” or the “Court”) in Case C-650/22 FIFA v Diarra (“Diarra”).

Less than two years later, on 10 June 2026, FIFA approved a new version of the RSTP due to officially enter into force on 1 January 2027.

The reform represents the most comprehensive overhaul of the transfer system since the introduction of the modern RSTP in 2001. While it responds directly to Diarra, it also reflects the ECJ’s insistence – primarily expressed in Superleague – that sports governing bodies must pursue legitimate objectives through rules that are transparent, objective and proportionate. Moreover, alongside the substantive amendments to the RSTP, FIFA introduced a new governance model under which future changes to the RSTP will be developed through structured social dialogue among players, clubs and leagues.

This blog examines the key EU competition law and free movement implications of the new RSTP. In particular, it considers how the revised rules reflect the principles identified in previous ECJ case law and how they reshape the competitive and regulatory framework governing player transfers.

Continue Reading From Diarra to FIFA’s New Player Transfer System: How EU Law is Reshaping Football’s Transfer Rules and Governance

On 16 January 2025, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) published a position paper, as it had announced last year, on the “interplay between data protection and competition law” (“Position Paper”).

In this blogpost, we outline the EDPB’s position on cooperation between EU data protection authorities (“DPAs”) and competition authorities (“CAs”) in the context of certain key issues at the intersection of data protection and competition law.

Key takeaways

  1. In the interest of coherent regulatory outcomes, the EDPB advocates for increased cooperation between DPAs and CAs.
  2. The Position Paper offers practical suggestions to that end, such as fostering closer personal relationships, mutual understanding, and a shared sense of purpose, as well as more structured mechanisms for regulatory cooperation.
  3. The EDPB is mindful of the Digital Markets Act’s (“DMA”) significance in addressing data protection and competition law risks.
Continue Reading EDPB highlights the importance of cooperation between data protection and competition authorities

On 19 September 2024, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ” or the “Court”) issued a preliminary ruling in response to a request from a Dutch court for clarification, inter alia, on whether wide and narrow price parity clauses in agreements between Booking.com and accommodation service providers constitute an ancillary restriction in the context of Article 101(1) (the “parity question”). In this context, a wide price parity clause restricts a hotel from offering better prices and terms on any other sales channels than it offers to Booking.com. A narrow price parity clause only restricts a hotel from offering better prices and terms on its own direct sales channel.

The ECJ held that price parity clauses in this context – both wide and narrow – are not “ancillary restraints” and therefore will not fall outside the scope of the prohibition against anticompetitive agreements set out in Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”). In particular, the inclusion of a price parity provision in such agreements is not indispensable to the main operation of the agreement – i.e., the operation of Booking.com is not rendered “impossible” without inclusion of the price parity provision. 

Key takeaways

  • Consequently, any price parity provision in a Booking.com agreement must be individually assessed for compliance with Article 101(1). Price parity restrictions may still be compatible with EU competition rules if they either benefit from a safe harbour under the Vertical Agreements Block Exemption Regulation (“VBER”) or qualify for individual exemption under Article 101(3). In practice, wide price parity provisions will not benefit from a safe harbour under the VBER (which treats wide parity restrictions as “excluded”, meaning they require individual assessment), and the bar for demonstrating efficiencies under Article 101(3) is high.    
  • Additionally, in response to a second question from the referring court (the “market definition question”), the ECJ provided guidance on the approach to market definition in assessing the conduct of Booking.com
  • The ruling represents an important development in the context of the assessment of price parity clauses under EU competition rules. The Court’s decision does not mean all price parity provisions will infringe competition law, and any form of price parity could still comply, depending on the facts in each case.  
Continue Reading ECJ’s Preliminary Ruling: Booking.com’s parity clauses are not ancillary restraints

What are the key take-aways of the mission letter to Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, EVP-designate responsible for EU competition policy?

On 17 September 2024, European Commission (“Commission”) President Ursula von der Leyen (“President”), announced her proposed College of Commissioners (“College”) for her second 5-year term. The Commissioners-designate still need to…

Continue Reading New Commissioner, New Mission, New Policy for Competition?

The European Court of Justice released its long-awaited judgment1 in the Google Shopping saga last week, finally putting to bed close to fifteen years’ of scrutiny into Google’s practices of favouring its own comparison shopping service (Google Shopping) over rival shopping services.

In its ruling, the ECJ upheld the General Court’s earlier judgment2 which had rejected Google’s appeal over the European Commission’s decision3 to fine it €2.42 billion for abusing its market dominance as a search engine by systematically favouring Google Shopping in its general search results.

The overall outcome of the ECJ’s reasoning in Google Shopping is perhaps unsurprising to competition law practitioners – given the unwavering direction of travel of the case. The ECJ judgment nevertheless raises a number of interesting points and leaves a number of questions unanswered.

Key takeaways

  • Refusal to supply. The judgment confirmed that not every issue of access necessarily requires the application of the Bronner test of refusal to supply. The ECJ found the Bronner doctrine applies in circumstances where a dominant firm refuses to grant a competitor access to infrastructure which it has developed for its own business needs. However, the ECJ ruled that the Bronner test is not applicable in cases where there is no outright refusal of access to infrastructure – but rather access granted on discriminatory terms (such discrimination being assessed under separate forms of potential abuse).
  • Competition not on the merits. The ECJ accepted Google’s arguments that, to establish an abuse of dominance under Article 102, a two-pronged test applies: (i) that actual or potential anticompetitive effects arise from the abusive conduct; and (ii) that the conduct falls outside of “competition on the merits”. However, in assessing the latter requirement, the ECJ rejected Google’s arguments that only circumstances relating specifically to Google’s conduct are relevant to the assessment. Instead, the ECJ held that, in assessing “competition on the merits”, relevant circumstances regarding the characteristics of the market or the nature of competition are capable of characterising the conduct as falling outside of the scope of competition on the merits.
  • Causality and counterfactual. The ECJ maintained that the causal link is one of the essential elements of a competition law infringement and that, as a result, the burden of proof for such causal link (and hence the counterfactual analysis) lies with the Commission. However, the ECJ found that the counterfactual analysis is just one way to establish causality. Where establishing a credible counterfactual may be “arbitrary or even impossible” (para 231), the Commission cannot be required to systematically establish a counterfactual and can rely on other evidence to establish causality.
  • “As-efficient competitors”. The ECJ reiterated earlier case law that it is not the objective of Article 102 to ensure that less efficient competitors remain on the market but also remarked that this statement did not imply that an abuse of dominance finding does not always require a showing that the conduct was capable of excluding an as-efficient competitor. With respect to the AEC test, the Court held that this is just one way to establish an abuse of dominance.
Continue Reading ECJ’s Google Shopping Judgment: The End of a Long Saga

On 3 September 2024, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) published its highly-anticipated judgment in Illumina/Grail v Commission (Joined Cases C‑611/22 P and C‑625/22 P) (“ECJ Judgment”), regarding the scope of application of Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation (“EUMR”).

The ECJ set aside the EU General Court (“GC”) judgment (Case T‑227/21) and ruled that the European Commission (“Commission”) does not have jurisdiction over transactions referred to it by the national competition authorities of EU Member States (“NCAs”) if the transactions do not meet the national thresholds of the referring EU Member States.

Key takeaways

  • Based on a historical, contextual, and teleological interpretation of Article 22 EUMR and the EUMR itself, NCAs cannot ask the Commission to examine transactions which do not meet their national thresholds.
  • Article 22 EUMR provides for a corrective function regarding the allocation of competences between the Commission and NCAs, and is to limit the possibility of multiple parallel notifications, providing legal certainty and facilitating the one-stop shop principle.
  • An amendment of the EUMR thresholds and/or referral rules to capture below-threshold transactions would likely entail a burdensome legislative process and complex negotiations with EU Member States.
  • The Commission can still rely on (i) new thresholds which have by now been introduced in some EU Member States to catch transactions outside the scope of their traditional turnover-based thresholds, and (ii) the possibility for NCAs to review these transactions by means of Article 102 TFEU, which prohibits abuses of a dominant position.
Continue Reading ECJ decides that EU Member States cannot refer below-threshold transactions to the European Commission (Illumina/Grail v Commission)

The European Commission’s draft guidelines on exclusionary abusive conduct by dominant firms under Article 102 TFEU (the “Draft Guidelines”) were published on 1 August 2024. They show a marked change from the 2009 Article 82 [now Article 102] Enforcement Priorities Guidance (the “Priorities Guidance”): economic concepts have largely been replaced with the Commission’s interpretation of the European Courts’ caselaw.

The consultation on the Draft Guidelines is open until 31 October 2024. Practical suggestions rooted in and developing the caselaw appear more likely to influence the Commission’s final version of the Draft Guidelines than statements of economics.

Continue Reading From Concept to Precedent: The 2024 Draft Guidelines on Article 102

On 18 July 2024, the current President of the European Commission (“Commission”), Ursula von der Leyen, was reconfirmed by the European Parliament for a second 5-year term. As part of her reconfirmation, President von der Leyen delivered a speech before the European Parliament, complemented by a 30-page program, which lays down the Commission’s political program for the next five years.

A key pillar of the program – “A new plan for Europe’s sustainable prosperity and competitiveness” – has the objective of combining competitiveness and prosperity with the achievement of the European Green Deal goals.

Specifically on competition policy, according to President von der Leyen, a new approach is needed to achieve this objective. This blog post projects where competition policy is likely headed in the 2024-2029 period by commenting on the most relevant paragraphs of the program.

Continue Reading The 2024-2029 Commission Political Guidelines: Where Is Competition Policy Likely Headed?