Commitment decision Content

Content of the commitment decision

The case team drafts a commitment decision on the basis of the Preliminary Assessment 1 . The commitment decision should contain a summary of the facts of the case and the Commission's legal assessment. In particular, the Commission needs to explain in its decision that it had identified competition concerns without going so far as to find an infringement 2 . The text should therefore systematically use the conditional form (“X may have infringed…”). The decision should also describe the commitments submitted by the undertaking(s) and explain why the commitments resolve the identified competition concerns in a proportionate manner.

More about Commitment decision Content

In cases where the Commission may initially have intended to impose a fine, a brief statement on why this is no longer appropriate may be useful.

More about the Subject

A commitment decision will usually be shorter than a decision under Article 7 of Regulation 1/2003. However, the actual length of the commitment decision may vary from case to case, depending, for example, on the complexity of the case or the Commission's interest to provide information on its assessment of certain anticompetitive practices.

Resources

See Also

References

• Information about Commitment decision Content in the Antitrust Manual of Procedures for the application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU (Internal DG Competition)

Notes

[Note 1] In principle, no substantially new elements (facts or theories of harm) should be introduced in the decision that were not mentioned in the Preliminary Assessment.
[Note 2] This is due to the fact that recital 13 of Regulation 1/2003 sets out that “commitment decisions should find that there are no longer grounds for action by the Commission without concluding whether or not there has been or still is an infringement”. The reason for this is that the Commission is not in a position to make formal findings of infringement and non-infringement in a decision that is not based on a complete investigation and does not set out in detail the factual background and the legal and economic analysis underlying such conclusions.

Further Reading

• Information about Commitment decision Content in “An Introduction to EU Competition Law”, Moritz Lorenz (Cambridge University Press)