Competition law applies horizontally in all sectors, in addition to sector-specific regulation. Antitrust and merger control cases abound in the telecoms and media sectors, with significant cases also occurring in the postal sector. In addition, the rise of the data economy is challenging traditional approaches to assess market power.

Cullen International’s cross-sectoral Competition Law service tracks and analyses all of these developments, allowing you to prepare for the business risks and commercial opportunities presented by antitrust and merger control rules. Our English language database of unbiased national and EU case summaries is organised around ten categories of cases: eight covering different forms of abuse of dominance, plus those covering restrictive agreements and mergers.

Over ten weeks, we will share with you one case summary per week from each of these categories.

Stay tuned for our special case selection and let us surprise you with some cases you may not have known about! We trust you will find our case selection interesting.

Case 5: Using competition law to negotiate prices

In our fifth highlighted case (in the category of exploitative abuses), Vodafone claims that duct access fees negotiated with Telekom Deutschland more than ten years ago are excessive, compared with Telekom’s current regulated fees and fees in other EU countries.

Lower courts initially considered that commercially negotiated fees cannot be abusive, but a higher court recalled that no such argument can shield a potential abuse from the application of competition rules. The case is still pending.