CYIL vol. 13 (2022)

MICHAL PETR CYIL 13 ȍ2022Ȏ In order to facilitate the assessment of the limits of legal cooperation during pandemic times, the Commission announced that it is willing to enter into oral consultations with the undertakings concerned and that it is even prepared to issue “comfort letters”. 22 This reminds of the practice before the Modernization of EU competition law in 2004, when undertakings, asking the Commission for an individual exemption from an anticompetitive agreement, received instead of a formal decision only a letter “comforting” them that their arrangements are in line with competition law. The Commission abandoned this practice in 2004 and until 2020, it has not issued any such letter. 23 Even though this was much acclaimed, 24 the number of actual comfort letters was surprisingly low; the Commission only refers to two of them. The first one was issued in April 2020 to “Medicines for Europe”, an association of pharmaceutical manufacturers and participating companies, in relation to a voluntary cooperation project to address the risk of shortages of critical hospital medicines for the treatment of coronavirus patients, 25 the second one addressed to co-organisers of a pan-European matchmaking event, which aimed at addressing bottlenecks in current production of COVID-19 vaccines and accelerating the use of additional available capacities across Europe, a year later. 26 In addition to that, there were also several amendments of legislation adopted already in April 2020, providing a limited exemption from antitrust rules for a few agricultural commodities, including potatoes for processing 27 and live trees, bulbs and cut flowers, 28 enabling agreements on market withdrawals and free distribution, transformation and processing, storage, joint promotion and temporary planning of production of these commodities, and milk and milk products, 29 enabling collusion on planning the volume of raw milk to be produced. Later in 2020, a similar exemption was adopted also for the wine sector. 30 These exemptions stayed in power for 6 months. 2.2 Specific rules on national level On the national level, the situation differed. The Czech Competition Authority issued already inMarch 2020 its first statement concerning COVID-19, stressing that the competition law remains in force and the authority is still on the watch for hard-core agreements and exclusionary abuse of dominance, even though it is aware of the fact that “ during the state 22 Temporary Antitrust Framework, para 18. 23 DE STEFANO, G. Covid-19 and EU Competition Law: Bring the Informal Guidance On. Journal of European Competition Law & Practice , 2020, No. 3–4, p. 122. 24 Ibid . 25 This letter is available at: https://ec.europa.eu/competition-policy/system/files/2021-03/medicines_for_europe_ comfort_letter.pdf (accessed 22 July 2022). 26 The comfort letter itself is not available online, but a reference to it may be found at: https://ec.europa.eu/ competition-policy/antitrust/coronavirus_en (accessed 22 July 2022). 27 Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/593 of 30 April 2020 authorising agreements and decisions on market stabilisation measures in the potatoes sector. 28 Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/594 of 30 April 2020 authorising agreements and decisions on market stabilisation measures in the live trees and other plants, bulbs, roots and the like, cut flowers and ornamental foliage sector. 29 Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/599 of 30 April 2020 authorising agreements and decisions on the planning of production in the milk and milk products sector. 30 Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/975 of 6 July 2020 authorising agreements and decisions on market stabilisation measures in the wine sector.

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