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Qualcomm faces patent probe
- Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for competition, announced on Monday (1 October) the launch of an in-depth inquiry into allegations that US mobile communications company Qualcomm has abused its patents for mobile phone technology. The Commission has received complaints from companies including Ericsson, Nokia and Texas Instruments that Qualcomm’s terms for grating access to its technology for third generation phones are unreasonable.
Bitumen cartel
- Fines totalling nearly €184 million for four companies making bitumen were announced on Wednesday (3 October) by the European Commission. The companies, Repsol and Cepsa (Spain), Nynäs (Sweden) and Galp (Portugal), were found guilty of carving up markets and swapping price information for bitumen, used in making roads. The UK firm BP was let off a fine, having notified the Commission of the cartel, which started in 1991 and ran for nearly 12 years.
Visa fined for Morgan Stanley snub
- International credit card operator VISA was fined €10.2m by the Commission on Wednesday for refusing to allow US Morgan Stanley bank to join its payment network. The Commission found that VISA had excluded Morgan Stanley from March 2000 to September 2006 without objective justification as the company had plans and expertise to contribute to more efficient competition. Until VISA finally admitted Morgan Stanley to its network in 2006, the US bank could only issue MasterCard credit cards in the UK.
Sony-BMG cleared for a second time
- The Commission announced on Wednesday that it was clearing the planned merger between music firms Sony and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG). The merger was initially cleared by the Commission in 2004 but the decision was annulled in 2006 by the European Court of First Instance which said that the Commission had made "manifest errors" of assessment and had insufficient evidence to justify its decision. Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said that the Commission had carried out "one of the most thorough analyses" ever in assessing the merger the second time round. Kroes said that the merger would not give the new firm a dominant position in the recorded music market.
Unemployment falls slightly
- Unemployment in the 27 EU member states fell slightly to 6.7% in August 2007 compared to 6.8% in July, according to the latest data from the EU’s statistical office Eurostat. In August 2006 the rate was 7.8%. The biggest falls were in Poland, which saw its jobless rate fall from 13.3% to 9.1% over a year, and Lithuania, where the rate fell from 5.8% to 4.1%. The biggest increases in unemployment were in Portugal (up to 8.3% from 7.5%) and Ireland, where the jobless total went up to 4.7% from 4.4% a year earlier. Unemployment in the 13-member eurozone was 6.9% in August 2007, compared to 7.8% in the same month in 2006.
MEPs will next week (9 October) discuss common principles on labour markets proposed by Vladimír Špidla, the European commissioner for employment and social affairs.
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