Commission Publishes Draft Guidance On Sustainability Agreements

On 1 March 2022 the EU Commission published, for consultation, its draft revised rules on horizontal cooperation agreements. The rules consist of two horizontal block exemption Regulations (covering Research & Development agreements and Specialisation agreements) and Guidelines on the application of Article 101 TFEU to horizontal cooperation agreements (Horizontal Guidelines). As had been anticipated, the draft Horizontal Guidelines now include a new chapter on the assessment of sustainability agreements, setting out a framework of analysis for agreements between competitors that pursue sustainability objectives.

For some time now there have been calls for a uniform EU-wide approach to sustainability agreements as national competition authorities, in particular the Dutch competition authority, have been leading the debate and published their own guidance. The Greek competition authority has also adopted a competition law sustainability 'sandbox' and Austria has