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EU plans to streamline its antitrust laws

With the intent to update anti-trust laws in the European Union (EU), regulators are looking to take stock of and revamp rules governing companies.

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PCQ Bureau
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With intent to update anti-trust laws in the European Union (EU), regulators are looking to take stock of and revamp rules governing companies’ abuse of market power and setting up illegal cartels, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said recently.

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The rules being discussed are known as Regulation 1/2003 and have been in force since 2004. Under these laws, the European Commission has taken on Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Intel and imposed billions of euros in fines.

The rules have also allowed the EU competition enforcer to go after car-parts cartels, banks (for manipulation of financial benchmarks), and other illegal price-fixing groups, putting the EU agency in the lead of antitrust enforcement.

Vesterger announced in a recent conference by the CRA, that within a short period of time, an evaluation of the 1/2003 Regulation will be launched. She also mentioned the importance of hearing out the stakeholders and learning what has been beneficial so far, and what possible scopes exist to make the enforcement of the regulation more efficient. She aims to make the regulation ‘truly fit for the digital age.

Vestager said the updated rules would seek to make them more operational and useful to businesses. Such procedural changes would relate to requests for information sent to companies, dawn raids, oral hearings where companies seek to defend their cases and the 10% cap on fines levied for breach of rules or non-compliance.

The European Commission has fined Google €4.34 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. Since 2011, Google has imposed illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators to cement its dominant position in a general internet search. Google must now bring the conduct effectively to an end within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company.

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