Complaint cases

Complaint cases: Information of Complainant

In cases where a complaint was lodged to the Commission against the agreement or practice for which the undertakings have offered commitments, the Commission needs to adopt two different decisions (unless the complaint is withdrawn): one rejecting the complaint (Article 7(2) Reg. 773/2004) and one declaring the commitments binding (Article 9 Reg. 1/2003). This is due to the fact that the commitment decision does not find an infringement as requested in the complaint.

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The fact that two decisions have to be taken requires some vigilance as to the timing. In particular it should be avoided that the commitment decision is already adopted and the Commission is confronted with new arguments in the rejection procedure requiring a reassessment of the case. It is therefore necessary that following the market test, the Commission issues a letter pursuant to Article 7(1) of the Commission Implementing Regulation 773/2004 (see para.(68) above).

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If the complainant does not make any comments, the complaint is deemed to have been withdrawn pursuant to Article 7(3) of the Commission Implementing Regulation 773/2004. If the complainant does make comments, but these comments are not so substantial that it is necessary to reassess the commitments 1 , the Article 9 procedure can be continued without any changes to the commitments and the complaint will have to be rejected pursuant to Article 7(2) of the Commission Implementing Regulation 773/2004.

Other Considerations

The rejection decision should follow soon after the Article 9 decision outlining that, following the commitments, there are no longer grounds for the Commission to pursue the case. It is recommended to annex a non-confidential version of the commitment decision. If the complaint raised more issues than addressed in the commitment decision, adequate reasoning needs to be added in the Article 7(2) rejection decision.

Resources

See Also

References

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

Notes

[Note 1] This is unlikely given the fact that the complainant has been invited to submit comments during the market test.

Further Reading

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