Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

EU's e-commerce sector competition inquiry reaches out to more than 2,000 businesses

29 Sep 2015, 5:46 pm

The European Commission has contacted more than 2,000 businesses in an information-gathering exercise that is part of a broad inquiry into competition in the e-commerce sector, a senior EU official has said.

In a speech (6-page / 535KB PDF) last week, Johannes Laitenberger, the director-general of the Commission's competition department, said the Commission wants to find out whether agreements between companies are hindering cross-border trade.

"The exercise is on a very large scale," Laitenberger said. "Our requests for information are reaching over 2,000 companies in every country of the EU and we’ve already received hundreds of replies. Our goal is building a detailed picture of the competitive conditions in the sector, both for goods such as clothes and consumer electronics and for digital content such as films and sports events. More specifically, the inquiry is designed to identify the barriers that may be erected by agreements between companies."

The Commission launched its e-commerce sector inquiry in May after first announcing its intention to look into competition issues in the market in March. At the time, competition law expert Guy Lougher of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said he expected the inquiry to "lead to subsequent antitrust enforcement actions". Laitenberger has now confirmed that enforcement action could be taken if it finds examples of competition law breaches.

"What we already know is that there are contractual barriers out there," Laitenberger said. "Recently the Commission and national competition authorities have been dealing with vertical restraints that make it unnecessarily difficult for Europe’s consumers to buy online. What we need to learn is how widespread these barriers are and the impact they have."

"A preliminary report will go out for consultation about the middle of next year. Once all stakeholders have had a chance to comment on it, we will produce a final report. At that point, we’ll have the evidence we need to decide how to prioritise our enforcement against possible anti-competitive agreements that could risk fragmenting the digital single market. The market knowledge from the final report will help us determine our enforcement priorities with a view to giving specific guidance to online businesses all over Europe on what they can and cannot do to stay on the right side of Europe’s competition law," he said.

The Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) places a general ban on companies entering into agreements which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the EU.