Super Bock Ruling

Super Bock ruling provides additional clarity on the object test as the appropriate factual assessment and may have potential implications to ACM's decisions in relation to resale price maintenance .

On 29 June 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") ruled on a number of preliminary questions submitted by the Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa. The CJEU ruled that it can only be determined whether the imposition of a minimum resale price constitutes a 'restriction by object' once it has been established whether the agreement, having regard to its provisions and objectives, as well as to all the elements playing a role in the relevant economic and legal context, is actually sufficiently harmful to competition. In doing so, the CJEU seems to favour a different approach to vertical price fixing, which may have implications for two recent decisions on resale price maintenance of the Dutch competition authority, the Authority for Consumers and Markets