Author: Jérémie Jourdan
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Balancing Fundamental Rights and Antitrust Enforcement: AG Medina’s Opinions on Email Seizures in IMI/Synlabhealth II
Do the fundamental rights to the protection of private life (Article 7 of the Charter[1]) and of personal data (Article 8 of the Charter[2]) preclude competition authorities from seizing professional emails during inspections without prior judicial authorisation? This is the question addressed by Advocate General (“AG”) Medina in her Opinions of 20 June 2024[3] (“First…
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Bulls vs Monsters: The General Court rejects Red Bull’s appeal against the Commission’s dawn raid decision
On 15 October, the General Court (“GC”) rejected Red Bull’s appeal against the European Commission (“EC”) dawn raid decision, in a case triggered by an informal complaint from Red Bull’s competitor, Monster Energy. In summary, the GC found that: The judgment contains interesting takeaways regarding the reasoning of dawn raid decisions, the sufficiency of evidence…
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Combination Therapies in Pharma – Removing the Antitrust Roadblock
This month, the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) published guidance on information exchange between pharmaceutical companies in the context of the reimbursement application procedure for combination therapies. This follows a prioritisation statement adopted by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in 2023 on the same issue and long-standing demands from the Belgian pharmaceutical industry.[1] In…