The annual workshop of the Studienvereinigung Kartellrecht is a long-standing tradition, bringing together German-speaking antitrust practitioners in Bonn every December. This event not only provides an excellent opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and friends but, more importantly, serves as a platform to reflect on the year's developments and discuss emerging trends in antitrust law. While … Continue reading Annual workshop of the Studienvereinigung Kartellrecht →

You know those stories that remain open-ended, leaving you wondering about how they might have concluded? But you are lucky, that does not is not supposed to happen on antitrustpolitics.com, as we also report on how cases continue every now and then. Therefore we take the recent EU court decision in AdC/EDP as an opportunity … Continue reading Potential competition revisited →

The week got off to the worst possible start for Booking: On Monday, the European Commission prohibited Booking’s proposed acquisition of eTraveli, one of the main providers of flight online travel agency services in Europe (we have already reported about the case here). In this post, I summarize the key points of the decision to … Continue reading The sky is not the limit →

Parties, which are of the opinion that their interests are affected by a merger, have the opportunity to intervene in a case in order to pursue their interests – also during EU court proceedings. Most recently, this played a role in Illumina/Grail (we've reported on that case several times, see inter alia here). In this … Continue reading Interventionism before EU courts →

It is said that things slow down over the summer. However, for friends of European merger control, there are several new developments that make you sit up and take notice. These cases concern merger control evergreens like gun-jumping and merger control jurisdiction. A potential gun jumping case… About a month ago, the European Commission announced … Continue reading The latest on gun jumping and merger control jurisdiction from the European Commission →

The German Bundeskartellamt terminated its proceedings regarding price parity clauses against Lieferando, one of Germany's leading food delivery platforms. Since the Bundeskartellamt has been rather critical of price parity clauses in the past, the termination might have come as quite a surprise. This post takes a look at the reasons for terminating the proceedings and … Continue reading Less strict rules for parity clauses in Germany? →

Co-authored by Carolin Goldbeck Sports content again!? Just as an opener for a broader topic: As repeatedly discussed on this blog (see, e.g., here and here), antitrust also applies with regard to sport. This is also true for professional football clubs, even though they are usually somewhat above the fray (at least for their fans). However, … Continue reading About football shirts and antitrust law →

I have to admit that golf is not (yet) my sport. However, on my way back from a client meeting last week, I listened to a really interesting podcast regarding the envisaged tie-up between the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) and Saudi Arabia sponsored LIV Golf and remembered that we briefly mentioned the case in one … Continue reading A golf tie-up and its antitrust implications →

Co-authored by Kaya Ricken One might not see the connection between antitrust and animal welfare at first sight. Truth is that these topics have been closely linked for quite some time now. This became (again) obvious this week, when the German Animal Welfare Initiative (“Initiative Tierwohl”) reacted to the concerns of the German Federal Cartel Office … Continue reading Holy Cow: Antitrust supports Animal Welfare? →

Last week, the European Commission received a merger notification concerning the takeover of the Germany-based market research company GfK by NielsenIQ. Apart from the fact that these two companies are well known in the antitrust community for the market data they provide, one might wonder why the case makes it into our blog (which is … Continue reading Pull & Refile →