Draft guidance consultation document

In October, the OFT published a draft guidance consultation document, “Mergers – Exceptions to the duty to refer and undertakings in lieu”.  The draft proposes significantly to amend the existing guidance on the de minimis exception and also clarifies the OFT’s approach to the assessment of customer benefits.  The undertakings in lieu section contains an important discussion of the upfront buyer mechanism.  The deadline for comments is 15 January 2010.

Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights

This report is concerned with the extent to which the Council of Europe’s treaty law can be regarded as having both specificity and added value. It defines the considerations relevant to establishing such characteristics and examines the content and implementation of treaties that have been adopted in the six principal groupings of them that have been identified. The report finds that at the time of adoption the provisions in the treaties were entirely relevant and to a very large extent adequate for the issues being addressed.

Article written for the European Lawyer, October 2009

Institutional reform is not usually the stuff of passion.  But the Lisbon Treaty has generated in Ireland a dazzling array of emotions – weariness, hostility, frustration, incredulity, enthusiasm and, most of all, bewilderment. The second Irish referendum on the Treaty takes place on 2^nd October in a context where nothing has changed in the Treaty the voters are considering but everything has changed in the world in which they live.

In general, there is much to welcome in the draft Guidelines.  First, it is helpful that the documents issued by the Authorities following the Enterprise Act are being updated to reflect experience and developments.   Secondly, it is valuable that the Authorities have identified common ground on many issues (which ought to ensure consistency between the two bodies) and have articulated the issues on which they intend to take a different approach.

First published in GCP June 2009

The Competition Appeal Tribunal (“the CAT”) gave judgment in the NAPP case, the first ever appeal, which included an appeal on penalty, under the Competition Act 1998 (“the Competition Act”) back in January 2002. In the intervening seven and a half years, the CAT has delivered a number of important judgments which reveal the way in which the CAT will exercise its jurisdiction to review penalties imposed by the Office of Fair Trading (“the OFT”) and other regulators. This article focuses on two particular aspects of this line of case law: the status accorded to the OFT’s Guidance on penalties and the principle of equal treatment, and then considers the implications of the CAT’s approach for parties seeking to appeal penalties.

This case involves the intersection of two very British pastimes; horseracing and betting. There are 60 racecourses in Great Britain and since 1986 it had been lawful for live pictures of horseracing to be shown in Licensed Betting Offices (“LBOs”).

 

Article first published in The Tax Journal, 23rd July 2007.

In Case C-369/04 Hutchison 3G UK Ltd & Others v CEC and Case C-284/04 T-Mobile & Others v Austria, judgments of 26 June 2007, the ECJ held that Member States’ auctions of 3G licenses do not constitute an economic activity and so fall outside the scope of the Sixth Directive.  In finding that claims by successful.

Article first published in the Competition Law Journal, Volume 6, Issue 1 2007

Modernisation has recently celebrated its second birthday.  Like proud parents, the European Commission and Council proclaimed its birth with lofty aspirations.  The Modernisation Regulation would ‘disseminate a competition culture within the Community’, create a system in which competition is not

Article first published in The Tax Journal, 21 May 2007

As an advocate I subscribe to the view that anything that hinders my opponent must help my client and vice versa.  Classifying propositions of law as a help or a hindrance is therefore typically my first port of call.  What then of the current vogue for relying upon the propositions of law to be derived from ECJ judgments.

Article first published in The Tax Journal, 5 March 2007

When I started to think about this article, I expected to be able to comment on how long it had taken for any party to an appeal to the Tribunal to rely on EC law.  I would not have been right. It is certainly true that early VAT decisions of the Tribunal, and of the Courts on appeal, approached the interpretation and application of the legislation as a