3rd ICAI 2024

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2024

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

countries, so that European car manufacturers are not put at a disadvantage. In the near future, we will see if and how those tools will be used in practice.

4. Conclusion The shift to an agency model signals a significant change in terms of car dealership in the EU and beyond. EU legislation generally does not prevent such a change from occurring. From the EU competition law perspective, however, car manufacturers should exercise caution particularly when crafting the related terms and conditions of the agency model. That is due to the fact that those conditions will affect whether the related restrictions under Article 101(1) TFEU will apply to the model at hand and it may be the case that a certain distribution model (internally labelled by a car manufacturer as an agency model) will be covered by those restrictions, whereas another will fall outside of it. Furthermore, the agency model may remove or reduce intra-brand competition. That may be counterbalanced by other considerations and benefits introduced by the model, but one should take the overall effects of the agency model into consideration particularly if the agency model enables a certain level of commercial freedom of the agents (and the related risk-bearing on their side), as the EU competition rules are likely to apply particularly to those situations. Disclosure statement: The authors regularly represent clients in antitrust matters, including investigations by competition authorities in the Czech Republic and the European Union and competition-law advice regarding distribution agreements. With respect to the subject-matter of this article, the authors do not report any conflicts of interests.

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