In cartel cases, there are good policy reasons to investigate all cartel members and to address a decision to each of them. Yet, the case is different when it comes to vertical infringements. ...Vertical infringements often involve more undertakings, but their continued existence depends on the participation of e.g. wholesalers. In consequence, antitrust authorities might be interested in pursuing a policy of selective enforcement and targeting investigations at single undertakings, even despite the fact that such infringements are multi-party ones. This, however, raises concerns whether such an approach is valid and how it affects the rights of defence. Taking into account that the European Commission’s return to RPM cases in 2018 provided national competition authorities (NCAs) with additional incentives to investigate vertical cases, this article reflects on what might be the reaction of the European Court of Justice (CJEU), if the aforementioned approach is questioned either during an appeals procedure or within a preliminary request.
Territorial restrictions are usually imposed by higher firms on lower firms about Sales domain of products subject to the contract or on the characteristics of customers in production or ...distribution chain. One of the controversial issues is the examination inconsistency or non-inconsistency of these with competition law. This study seeks to provide a clear answer to the fundamental question of whether territorial restrictions are considered necessarily a violation of competition law or are considered suspect restrictions. The results are evaluated according to the rule of reason in US competition law; While in EU law, exemptions are provided for evaluation the competitive effects declared legitimate and permissible if comply with the declared criteria. In the Iranian legal system, the legislator has simply mentioned two examples of territorial restrictions in Article 44 of the Law on Implementation of General Policies of Principle as anti-competitive restrictive conditions. Therefore, after explaining the concept and economic result, examines and analyzes the procedures of the courts and laws of the United States, the European Union and Iranian law from the perspective of competition law, and shows the surprising deficiencies provides suggestions to amend Iranian regulations to be more in line with the principles and objectives of competition law.
Resale price maintenance represents a special type of vertical restraint in a vertical agreement, in which an upstream undertaking defines, controls or restricts the price at which a downstream ...undertaking can resell its product. According to the Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/720 on the application of Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to categories of vertical agreements and concerted practices the exemption shall not apply to vertical agreements which, directly or indirectly, in isolation or in combination with other factors under the control of the parties, have as their object the restriction of the buyer's ability to determine its sale price, without prejudice to the possibility of the supplier to impose a maximum sale price or recommend a sale price, provided that they do not amount to a fixed or minimum sale price as a result of pressure from, or incentives offered by, any of the parties. Minimum or fixed resale price maintenance represents a hardcore restriction and as such removes the benefit of the block exemption provided for in Art. 2 of the Regulation 2022/720. The paper deals with the legal regulation of restrictive vertical agreements in which a fixed or minimum resale price is determined in the competition law of the European Union, as well as the methods for such resale price maintenance. The problem will be considered through the analysis of relevant sources of law, practice of the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union and doctrinal views.
Parallel airline alliances have negative effects on consumers a priori; however, they can be counteracted if airports may modify the behavior of airlines. In particular, vertical airport–airline ...agreements allow the airport to influence the competition downstream market, changing the effects of parallel alliances. In this paper, we analyze the effects of parallel alliances in the context of competition between vertical airport–airline pairs competition. We show that under the influence of airports, parallel alliances are welfare improving, and the number of passengers increases, against former studies. These results offer a new brand of analyses to be considered by authorities that evaluate parallel alliances.
•Under concession revenue sharing, airline parallel alliances rise consumer surplus.•Parallel alliances enhance airports to increase the sharing revenues with airlines.•Rival airports may behave as strategic complements when airlines strongly cooperate.
Consten and Grundig was fundamental in shaping EU competition law and giving it its distinctive character. Issued in 1966, before the creation of a vast body of EU case law on competition, it ...introduced many of the fundamental concepts and guiding principles of EU competition law. Especially its emphasis on market integration and the Court’s treatment of vertical agreements through a purportedly “formalist” approach remain both influential and controversial to this day. The release of the dossier de procédure sheds light on the thought processes that led to this judgment. The Court’s choice to stick with the “object” analysis when dealing with vertical restraints harmful to market integration was by no means unavoidable. The parties and the intervening governments followed an intricate litigation strategy, informed by robust argumentation and a wealth of evidence based on economic data and comparative law, which was never analysed in its entirety by the Court or the subsequent literature. The dossier helps contextualise the Court’s choice to disregard this line of argumentation and to underline the centrality of the single market imperative for the application of competition law. At the same time, it provides a valuable insight into how the various actors involved in the dispute (not just the parties and the Court but also personally the lawyers, and the representatives of the States) perceived their role and interacted with each other during those early, formative days of EU competition law.
A vertical agreement is an agreement between two or more economic entities, each of which operates at different levels of the commercial market. These agreements may contain non-price excluding terms ...that are contrary to competition law. One of the controversial issues in this regard is whether competition law will recognize non-price restraints on vertical agreements as detrimental to competition or not only does it not constitute a barrier to competition but also finds it useful in competition. The findings of the comparative studies show that non-price restraints on US and EU competition law are among the suspected restraints, however, due to the different approaches in competition law policies, the scope of inclusion in both legal systems is different. U.S jurisprudence has recognized it as independent restrictive arrangements and analyzes it under the rule of rationality. There are general and individual exemptions in EU law for the assessment of vertical restraints, which are declared legitimate if they meet the stated criteria. In Iranian law, the competitive approach to these restraints is ambiguous due to the lack of an explicit position, however, by relying on the general rules of competition law and the interpretation of Articles 44 and 45 of Law on Implementation of General Policies of Principle (44) of Constitution, we can find examples of restrictive procedures and agreements that can be adapted to these restraints in US and EU competition law.
ABSTRACT
The correct welfare assessment of vertical agreements in competition law is a difficult craft. The more mature jurisdictions such as the EU and the US have struggled to develop the optimal ...framework. This article scrutinizes vertical agreements cases of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) that is now 11 years old. The objective is to assist the CCI in strengthening its legal and economic framework vis-à-vis vertical agreements in its formative stage. The scrutiny of some leading cases revealed three types of infirmities in CCI’s cases. First, there are some legal ambiguities in the interpretation of the legislation. Secondly, the economic analysis is largely incoherent and truncated. Thirdly, there is a visible overreliance on the EU jurisprudence that does not conform to the legislative scheme of the Indian Competition Act, 2002. The article draws out some lessons towards the end.
The paper aims at showing the influence and the views espoused by economic theories and schools of economics on competition policy embedded in antitrust law and conducted by competition authorities ...in the field of vertical agreements. The scope of the paper demonstrates how substantially the economization of antitrust law has changed the assessment as to the harmfulness of vertical agreements. The analysis of economic aspects of vertical agreements in antitrust analysis allows one to reveal their pro-competitive effects and benefits, with the consumer being their beneficiary. The basic instrument of the said economization is that antitrust bodies draw on specific economic models and theories that can be employed in their practice. Within the scope of the paper, the author synthesizes the role and influence of those models and schools of economics on the application of competition law in the context of vertical agreements. In presenting, one after another, the theories and schools of economics which used to, or are still dealing with competition policy the author emphasises that in its nature this impact was more or less direct. Some of them remain at the level of general principals and axiology of competition policy, while others, in contrast, delineate concrete evaluation criteria and show how the application of those criteria changes the picture of anti-competitive practices; in other words, why vertical agreements, which in the past used to be considered to restrain competition, are no longer perceived as such. The paper presents the models and recommendations of neoclassical economics, the Harvard School, the Chicago and Post-Chicago School, the ordoliberal school, the Austrian and neo-Austrian school as well as the transaction cost theory.
This article seeks to draw attention to two areas of technological innovation relevant to the digital economy that the European Commission ('Commission') seems so far to have missed in its evaluation ...of the effectiveness of and reforms required to the Vertical Agreements Block Exemption Regulation ('VBER') and the associated Guidelines: fintech and blockchain technologies. In particular, this article seeks to demonstrate that vertical agreements can produce novel solutions in certain fintech markets, whilst also creating potential novel issues around exclusion, bundling and market power when used in the context of blockchain technologies. It is hoped that the results of the public consultation will bring some of these issues to the Commission's attention, because without taking these issues into consideration the Commission risks missing the opportunity to make ex ante changes to the VBER to ensure that it is ready for potential future innovations in the digital economy.
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