UK CMA Green Agreements Guidance

The UK CMA has now (12 October) published its keenly awaited Green Agreements Guidance, explaining how collaborations between competitors to promote environmental sustainability will be treated under domestic competition laws prohibiting anticompetitive agreements.

Our briefing earlier this year reviewed the draft, summarising the basic framework by which the CMA will approach these collaborations and key differences to the approach of the European Commission. In the finalised guidance, the CMA preserves much of that original drafting and continues to express a determination to ensure that competition law does not prove a barrier to legitimate green collaborations between competing firms. For example, it continues to demonstrate a more permissive approach to agreements that combat or mitigate climate change than the European Commission.