Recent developments in Swiss competition law
Table of contents
- I. Introduction
- II. Agreements
- III. Dominant positions
- IV. Merger control
- V. Procedure
I. Introduction
- 1. The Competition Commission’s1 decisions on the distribution in Switzerland of francophone books2 did not satisfy nine of the parties to the investigation; they all appealed to the Federal Administrative Tribunal, which handed down its judgments at the end of October 2019.3 Numerous lessons may be drawn from these judgments. In particular:
- European competition law remains a great source of inspiration for Swiss authorities. For instance, the court pointed out that the differences between the regimes governing agreements are “in great part only apparent.”4
- In competition law, a group constitutes one sole undertaking.5 Among other things, this implies that legal entities belonging to the same group may not enter into agreements from a competition law standpoint (so-called “group privilege”).6
- In case of an absolute territorial protection, both direct and indirect exclusions of pass…
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