EC Antitrust Law Update

On June 4, 2009, the European Court of Justice (E.C.J.) rendered a decision on exchanges of information between competitors and ruled for the first time that a single meeting between competitors can amount to an anticompetitive concerted practice. Moreover, the E.C.J. stated that the burden of proof rests with the competitors to prove that they did not improperly make use of the shared information in their subsequent market conduct.

The Dutch Competition Authority had referred to the E.C.J. three interlocutory questions in a case in which five operators of mobile telecommunications services in The Netherlands held a meeting in June 2001 to discuss the reduction of payments to dealers for subscriptions.