Droit du Travail européen

Conference - The International Bar Association (IBA) is organising its 6th Annual Corporate Governance Conference in Frankfurt on 5 and 6 December 2019. Together with Damien Zoubek (Cravath, Swaine & Moore) Pieter Schütte will co-chair this two-day conference. Derk Lemstra will co-chair a panel discussion on Friday.

Short Reads - Buying groups are under attack from competition authorities across Europe. Joint buying arrangements are aimed at strengthening participating companies' bargaining power towards their trading partners, usually resulting in lower prices or better quality for consumers. However, these buying arrangements must stay on the right side of the line between legitimate cooperation and anticompetitive collusion. Competition concerns may arise if the participating companies have a significant degree of market power or coordinate their conduct.

Short Reads - Big tech firms, whether entering or already active on payments markets, are under scrutiny. PSD2 has opened up the payments markets to non-bank companies, but this comes with both risks and opportunities. EU regulators are examining anticompetitive risks, for example the possibility of leveraging a strong position in one market into another market. Competition, innovation, privacy and security for financial transactions will all be hot topics as scrutiny increases on providers of payment services.

Short Reads - The Court of Appeal of Arnhem – Leeuwarden recently applied the competition law notion of an 'undertaking' in a civil damages suit between TenneT and an entity belonging to the Alstom group of companies. The Court of Appeal ruled that Cogelex formed a single undertaking with its 48% shareholder Alstom. Cogelex could therefore be held liable under civil law for the competition law infringement of its 48% parent company. The Court of Appeal based its decision on a broad application of the ECJ’s reasoning in its Skanska judgment of 14 March 2019.