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Record fine
- The European Commission on Wednesday (4 July) imposed a fine of €151.8 million on the Spanish company Telefónica, for abusing its market position by overcharging for access to its fixed-line network. The fine was the biggest ever handed out in the telecommunications sector, more than ten times larger than the previous record of €12.6m for Deutsche Telekom in 2003.
Internal market score
- EU countries are still missing targets for the implementation of internal market directives. According to the Commission’s latest six-monthly scoreboard published on Monday (2 July), 1.6% of legislation was still not put into national law, up from 1.2% in January and above the 1% target for January 2008 agreed by EU leaders at their March summit. There are 18 member states that still have more than 1% of internal market directives to implement and only four have managed to reduce the number of infringements against them for legislation that has been implemented.
- Nestlé is free to acquire the medical nutrition business of Novartis as long as it acts on an offer to divest the overlapping activities in France and Spain, the Commission announced on Friday (29 June), ruling that the merger would not pose a barrier to competition in the healthcare nutrition markets in other member states.
DVD probe
- The Commission said on Tuesday (2 July) that it had asked film companies to explain how they were choosing between two rival DVD formats, as the first step towards a possible antitrust investigation. The Commission said it wanted to find out whether there was discrimination against either HD DVD or Blu-ray disc standards.
Airfare exemptions
- Airlines will no longer be exempt from competition rules when setting ticket prices for flights involving more than one carrier on routes outside the EU, the Commission announced on Friday. It said it would not renew a competition exemption which expired on 30 June for routes between the EU and the US or Australia and which will end on 31 October for all other routes to third countries.
Energy market
- From 1 July, EU citizens became free to choose their own electricity and gas supplier, without incurring any costs. The Commission expects the development to improve security of supply, encourage competitive energy prices and lead to the development of renewable energy sources. The Commission was today (5 July) adopting an energy consumers charter to protect public rights in the open market.
EU antitrust regulators are anxiously awaiting a court ruling next week (11 July) on a claim for damages brought by the French group Schneider Electric against the European Commission.
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