Antitrust and abuse of dominance proceedings from A to Z

An eventful 2024:

While things were “quiet” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission increased its use of inspections to investigate alleged antitrust infringements again in 2024. Among other things, the Commission focussed on the distribution of financial derivatives, the tyres sector and most recently the data centre construction sector. Furthermore, the Commission completed several antitrust proceedings, fining Rabobank €26.6 million (Euro-denominated bonds trading cartel), ethanol producers €47.7 million (benchmarks cartel) and a railway services operator and Österreichische Bundesbahnen €48.7 million (collusion to exclude a common competitor).

In the Banco BPN case, the Court of Justice of the European Union found that an exchange of information between competitors may already be sufficient to constitute a restriction of competition by object without requiring any coordination on pricing based on the information exchanged (for details, see Noerr Insights). In the light of this decision, a stricter view by competition authorities can be expected in the future when assessing exchanges of competitively sensitive information between competitors.

Furthermore, the European Court of Justice has issued several important judgements for the sports sector, concerning the European Super League, the International Skating Union, the Royal Antwerp Football Club and, most recently, FIFA’s transfer regulations. The Court clarified, among other things, that all economic activities of sports associations must comply with competition laws. Sports associations may establish procedural rules. However, such rules must be transparent, objective, non-discriminatory, proportionate and, as a consequence, must not restrict competition even outside the relevant association.

In addition, the European Court of Justice supported the Commission’s standpoint on the abuse of a dominant position. In the Google shopping case, the Court confirmed that a dominant undertaking’s preferential treatment of its own products over those of competitors can constitute an anticompetitive abusive practice towards its competitors (for details, see Noerr Insights). Soon, the European Court of Justice may also have to deal with the Commission’s Meta decision where the Commission considered Meta’s tying of its online classified ads service to its social network Facebook and imposing various trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers as abusive. This resulted in a €797.72 million fine for Meta.

The German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) imposed a fine in the construction sector. It also gave the green light for a reuse system to reduce plastic waste in the plant trade sector. In addition, the FCO discontinued proceedings in the e-bikes and copper production sectors after the parties involved had made concessions and stopped the practices concerned.

2025 will likely be an eventful year too:

The Commission intends to issue new guidelines on abusive exclusionary conduct. Due to recent ECJ decisions, there is reason to believe that the draft published in 2024 will have to be revised.

Labour markets are also increasingly becoming the focus of competition authorities. In a policy brief (for details, see Noerr Insights), the Commission recently classified both no-poach agreements – i.e. agreements between employers not to solicit employees from each other – and wage-fixing agreements (outside of collective bargaining agreements between trade unions and employer associations) as restrictions of competition by object. If this classification is upheld in court, the Commission’s work would become easier as it would not be required to prove actual anti-competitive effects of such agreements on the market. In addition to inspections, the first proceedings have now been initiated in this sector (online food delivery sector).

This article is part of the Competition Outlook 2025. You can find all Competition Outlook articles here.