Webinar: EU Competition Law Briefing

The CMS EU Competition Law Briefings have been created to provide a platform for our clients and other competition law experts to stay up to date on the developments of EU Competition Law. Every month CMS competition experts will present a recent case by the EU Commission or Community Courts during an one hour webinar. 

In this session Björn Herbers will present the General Court’s decision in “CK Hutchison v European Commission” (Case T-399/16). 

This landmark case marks the first ever decision by the Community Courts on the application of the SIEC (significance impediment to effective competition) test outside of traditional market dominance scenarios, so-called gap cases. 

In 2016 the Commission blocked the takeover of O2, Telefónica’s UK mobile operator, by CK Hutchison. The Commission argued that the reduction from four to three competitors in the UK would have likely led to an increase in prices for mobile telephony services and a restriction of choice for consumers. The General Court now found that the Commission’s analysis had been vitiated by several errors of law and of assessment and annulled the decision. 

We will discuss to what extent this decision will create more options for mergers by businesses operating in concentrated markets.