EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Prague, Czechia

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

international jurisdiction but also the local jurisdiction (national competence) of the courts. As a matter of fact, this is apparent from the literal wording of Article 7, which specifically refers to “ courts for the place ”, where, for example, the harmful event occurs, as opposed to the wording “ in the courts of a Member State ” used by the general provision in Article 4 of the Brussels Regulation Recast. Therefore, Article 7 determines in which particular court of a Member State a defendant who is domiciled in another Member State may be sued, thereby, in essence, interfering in the judicial organisation of each Member State. This fact has been known for some time now. Specifically in the field of private enforcement of competition law, the Court has so far only dealt with the question of which Member States have international jurisdiction (e.g., C-352/13 CDC Hydrogen Peroxide , C-27/17 flyLAL-Lithuanian Airlines , C-451/18 Tibor-Trans , and C-343/19 Verein für Konsumenteninformation ). However, this is probably the first time it has ruled, on the field of competition law, that Article 7(2) of the Brussels Regulation Recast also directly governs the local jurisdiction of the courts on the basis of the place of a harmful event. This judgment thus plays a key role in identifying the courts of the Member States to which the injured parties may bring their claims for the infringement of competition law within the meaning of Article 7(2) of the Brussels Regulation Recast. 2. Factual circumstances of the Volvo case RH was a Spanish company domiciled in Córdoba, Spain. Between 2004 and 2009, RH purchased five trucks from a Volvo Group España SA dealership for its road transportation business. The first of those trucks was initially the subject of a leasing agreement before being purchased by RH in 2008. On 19 July 2016, the European Commission (the Commission) adopted the decision relating to a proceeding under Article 101 TFEU and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement (Case AT.39824 – Trucks). By that decision, the Commission found that between 17 January 1997 and 18 January 2011 there was a cartel between 15 truck manufacturers, including AB Volvo, Volvo Lastvagnar AB, and Volvo Group Trucks Central Europe GmbH, concerning two categories of products. In particular, it concerned trucks weighing between 6 and 16 tonnes (medium trucks) and trucks weighing more than 16 tonnes (heavy trucks), whether rigid trucks or tractor trucks. The alleged infringement consisted of collusive arrangements on pricing and gross price increases in the European Economic Area (the EEA) for trucks, and the timing and the passing on of costs related to the introduction of emission technologies for medium and heavy trucks required by the emission standards EURO 3, 4, 5, and 6. The infringement was alleged to have spanned the entire EEA and to have occurred between 17 January 1997 and 18 January 2011. Consequently, the Commission imposed fines on all the entities

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