Frontier welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to adopt Guidelines on exclusionary abuses of dominance and has provided a response.

In line with the Commission’s aim and practice in other areas, the Guidelines should be comprehensive – aiming to address all the key steps undertaken by the authority when assessing an exclusionary abuse of dominance case – and aim to strike the right balance between providing enough specific guidance and examples, and being future-proof.

Within this context, we believe the key area the new Guidelines should tackle head-on is the one related to the underlying framework that should be applied when analysing exclusionary abuse cases. We consider this to be the key challenge the Commission faces in this process.

In our response to the call for evidence, we set out why we think the Commission needs to move beyond the false dichotomy between ‘by object’ and AEC, and we put forward a proposed framework for assessment of exclusionary abuses of dominance.

Read our full response here.

Frontier regularly advises clients on antitrust issues relating to European and national competition law.

For further information please contact media@frontier-economics.com or call +44 (0) 20 7031 7000.