An overview of the activities and most important proceedings of the German Federal Cartel Office and the European Commission in the past year

Competition authorities both at an EU as well as at a national level continue to keep a keen eye on pursuing excessive pricing cases against pharmaceutical companies

The Federal Court of Justice further backs claimants in follow-on damages litigation in ruling on contractual lump-sum clauses for cartel damages in supply agreements applying antitrust-specific standards for the assessment of such clauses

The European Commission’s Guidance on the Art. 22 EUMR Referral Mechanism

Digital Markets Act, Sustainability, FDI – These topics have been pushed to the top of the policy agenda by the pandemic

The 10^th amendment, also known as Digitization Act, entered into force on 19 January 2021

Recently published decisions issued by the German Federal Court of Justice and the Dutch Competition Authority give occasion to take a closer look into the prerequisites and consequences of anticompetitive exchange of information

Both the European Commission as well as national competition authorities have been taking a firm stance in the past year in relation to vertical antitrust infringement cases

Collective redress models in the context of antitrust damage claims continue to face considerable hurdles in German courts as recent case law shows

Preliminary thoughts from a competition lawyer’s perspective