COMPETITION • EUROPEAN LAW • MERGERS
In the Gencor judgment, the EU court clearly asserted that collective dominance could be an instrument of control of oligopolistic market situations: “there is nothing, in principle, to prevent two or more independent economic entities from being united by economic links in a specific market and, by virtue of that fact, from together holding a dominant position vis-à-vis the other operators on the same market”.
In other words, the existence of structural ties is not necessary to the establishment of a collective dominant position, which may result from economic ties in the broad sense of the term, meaning oligopolistic market structures wherein each operator may learn of the common interest and increase prices without having made an agreement or resorting to a concerted practice.
