MY ACCOUNTLack of jurisdiction of Competition Authority
A letter from the president of the Marseilles Bar, acting on behalf of the Marseilles Bar Council which he chairs, requesting one of its members who had taken the initiative of setting up a competing bar to dissolve this structure, or face disciplinary measures for failure to comply with the ethical obligations of lawyers, reflects the exercise of public authority which excludes the jurisdiction of the Competition Authority.
CA Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 7, 16 January 2025, No 22/17546
Action for failure to fulfil obligations
By failing to adopt measures to ensure full transposition of Directive No 2019/1, known as ECN+, and by failing to notify the Commission of its provisions, the Republic of Estonia has failed to fulfil its obligations to the full, and has done so for a period of three years and fifteen days, with the result that the Court of Justice, exercising its discretion under the Commission’s proposed penalties calculated in accordance with its guidelines, may order it to pay a lump sum of EUR 400,000, together with a daily penalty payment of EUR 3,000, should the infringement persist, insofar as it is liable to hinder the effective application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU not only in Estonia, but throughout the European competition network.
CJEU Case C-577/23 Commission v Estonia, Judgment of 18 September 2023.
State aid
Given the extremely large number of provisions and principles of EU law that may be infringed by the grant of aid, the Commission cannot be required, without undermining the effectiveness of the procedure under Article 108 TFEU, or even the possibility to take a decision in favor of aid after the preliminary examination phase referred to in Article 108(3) TFEU, and thus without initiation of the formal investigation procedure, to provide specific reasoning concerning each one of them, and, in the present case, as far as concerns Article 56 TFEU.
CJEU Case C 490/23 P Neos SpA, Judgment of 29 January 2025.
Search and seizure operations
Articles 60 and 77-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure – under which any person acting as a “qualified person” during search and seizure operations is required to take an oath, unless the officer is acting within the framework of the police powers conferred on him by law – are applicable to agents of the DGCCRF called upon in that capacity by a judicial police officer to assist him/her during the search, pursuant to a requisition order issued to the departmental directorate for the protection of populations.
Cass. Crim., 14 January 2025, No 24-83.571
Misleading omissions
Information relating to the manner in which the price is calculated must not necessarily contain the specific percentage of a component which may vary, such as the compensatory amount applied by the electricity supplier to the consumer concerned, with the result that the latter, once he or she knows his or her electricity consumption, can calculate that price independently, provided that that communication indicates the applicability in principle of such a percentage, together with a possible scale and the components having an impact on that percentage, thus enabling the average consumer to make an informed transactional decision.
CJEU Case C-518/23 Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen und Verbraucherverbände – Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V. Judgment of 23 January 2025.
