Division of responsibilities in NCA cases

Division of responsibilities in NCA cases. Introduction

Under the system created by Regulation 1/2003, national competition authorities are obliged to apply Articles 101 and 102 TFEU when an agreement/practice is capable of affecting trade between Member States. This requires and/or allows for contacts between all the competition authorities in the Network at various stages of the respective procedures: – Case allocation discussions may take place at the initial phase of a case. Where re-allocation issues arise, they should be resolved swiftly, normally within a period of two months starting from the date of the first information sent to the Network. This will require the sectoral units to decide quickly whether or not they want to deal with certain cases (taking into account the priority setting mechanisms). – In order to maintain consistency in the application of European competition law, national authorities must inform the Commission before adopting certain types of decisions under Article 11(4). These “consultations” require an examination within a short deadline of 30 (calendar) days. – Assistance during the fact finding phase and in particular exchange of information pursuant to Article 12.

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All DG Competition case-handlers have a direct access to the informatics application and its ECN case forms (“fiches”): a new case fiche, an envisaged decision fiche and a closed case fiche.

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DG Competition must monitor the fiches submitted to the informatics application, informing the Commission of a step taken in national procedures applying Articles 101 and 102 TFEU. Each sectoral unit needs an ECN responsible person, who regularly checks new fiches and, if appropriate, immediately draws the attention of the head of unit to cases of potential relevance to the unit (both with a view to avoiding duplication of efforts and ensuring consistency). Case allocation monitoring on the basis of new case fiche

Resources

See Also

References

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

Further Reading

• Information about Division of responsibilities in NCA cases in EU Competition Procedure, 3rd. Edition, Edited by Luis Ortiz Blanco (Oxford University Press)