Blogs

The general elections will be held in The Netherlands on 15 March 2017. A major theme of many election programmes, whether it concerns employment, healthcare, agriculture or the role of the Dutch main ports, is “fair competition”. This newsletter takes a closer look at a number of major trends in competition law. Read more >

It is often difficult to say what disputes do or don’t come under a contractual choice of forum or arbitration clause – particularly in the case of civil claims based on breach of competition law. Under Dutch law, breach of competition law constitutes a wrongful act. Read more >

After a summer with various interesting developments, very interesting developments are expected this autumn in the field of market supervision in the healthcare sector. The main ones are addressed in this blog. Read more >

The main development in the Dutch telecom sector is undoubtedly the merger of the Dutch activities of Ziggo and Vodafone. The European Commission recently cleared that transaction. But it made the go-ahead conditional on Vodafone divesting its consumer fixed line business in the Netherlands. Read more >

Earlier this year we concluded that Dutch civil courts set the bar very high and are not easily inclined to enforce competition law. In 2016 a few interesting judgments have passed that suggest a more lenient approach. Read more >

As we predicted at the start of this year, the passing-on defence again played a role in cartel damage actions in 2016. The Dutch Supreme Court recently addressed the legal basis of that defence in its TenneT/ABB judgment. Read more >

There have been many relevant developments at a European level in the past few months regarding cartels, merger control, abuse of a position of power, and state aid. A brief list of the main cases is presented below. Read more >