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Competition authorities have a new “top model”

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by Joana Whyte, Associate Lawyer at SRS Advogados and member of CEDU
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Until recently, the fashion industry had never been an obvious sector of focus for competition authorities. However, in the past few months, national competition authorities from Italy, the United Kingdom and France have been particularly attentive to this industry, initiating investigations for competition law infringements which culminated in the imposition of fines on several entities, reminding us all that competition law applies to all sectors of the economy.

In November 2016, the Italian Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato concluded that eight major modelling agencies, representing 80% of Italy’s market share, including Elite Model Management, Major Model Management and the association of the fashion industry – Assem, had participated in a cartel during the relevant period from May 2007 to March 2015. The activity occurred in the context of negotiations with customers, including fashion houses, luxury car dealers, consumer goods brands and advertising companies on services ranging from runway shows to photoshoots for catalogues and promotional events.

The investigation was triggered by a leniency application put forward by IMG Italy, S.r.L on 18th September 2014. Following a thorough investigation, the Italian Competition Authority applied a total fine of €4.5 million on the investigated entities[i]. The evidence provided by IMG was considered to be decisive for the investigation. In particular, IMG provided useful elements for understanding the nature of the cartel, the purposes it pursued, and the ways in which it was achieved, and therefore was granted total immunity by the Autorità.
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The right to withdraw the notification to leave the European Union under Article 50 TEU: can we still save the marriage?

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Phrase Wedding Marriage Love Or Money Wedding Ring

by Mariana Alvim, PhD candidate at University of Lisbon
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The 29 March 2017 will be always recalled as the date the United Kingdom has served divorce papers on the European Union, following a referendum that took place on the 23 June 2016 where the majority of the British people decided to leave the EU.

The EU institutions and the Member States have limited instruments at their disposal to persuade other Member State to remain a member of the Union against their will; therefore if exit cannot be prevented at least it can be regulated.

The decision to depart is always taken in accordance with the Member State’s domestic law but once Article 50 TEU is triggered the law of the European Union governs the withdrawal process and the departure itself.

And despite its rapid rise to fame in the result of the British referendum, this sparsely worded Treaty provision still raises more questions that it answers.

It is important to underline that Article 50 TEU imposes substantive and procedural conditions on the withdrawing Member State. But once it has given notice under Article 50(1) TEU, all that the withdrawing Member State is apparently required to do, before the Treaties cease to apply, is to wait out the two-year period stipulated in Article 50(2) TEU.

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Editorial of July 2017

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by Maria José Costeira, Portuguese Judge at the General Court of the CJEU

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The transposition of the Private Enforcement Directive: a critical perspective

On 26th November 2014 the Directive 2014/104/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union was approved. That directive, usually called Directive Enforcement, has to be transposed into national law by Member States until the 27th December 2016 (Article 21).

In Portugal, the National Competition Authority (Autoridade da Concorrência – AdC) entity in charge of preparing the transposition, presented, on the 22nd June 2016, the last proposal of a preliminary draft[i] for the transposition, which resulted from a process of public discussion.

Here, I intend to draw attention to some aspects that could be improved in the proposal.

Article 2 of the proposal gives the definition of cartel as “the agreement or concerted action between two or more competing companies which aims at coordinating their competition behaviour in the market or influencing the relevant competition standards through acts such as, namely, fixing or coordinating the prices of acquisition or sell or other conditions of transactions, including in relation to rights of intellectual property, attribution of production or sell quotas, sharing markets and clients, including the concertation in auctions and public procurements, restricting importations or exportations or conducting anti-competitive acts against other competitors as prohibited by Article 9 of the Law nº. 19/2012, of 8th May, and if applicable by Article 101, TFEU”.

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Portuguese Constitutional Court’s decision n.º 591/2016, of 9 November 2016 or when the Constitutional Court looked to EU law legal aid matters: figuring out the treasure’s map…

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by Joana Covelo de Abreu, Junior Editor
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The dispute in the main proceedings

On 9th November 2016, the Portuguese Constitutional Court issued decision n.º 591/2016, concerning an incidental and concrete constitutionality control presented before this court.

In the litigation, a legal person presented before the competent national administrative authority (Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P. – Centro Distrital de Braga) a request for legal aid, which was refused without further consideration since article 7(3) of the Portuguese legislation (Lei n.º 34/2004) is clear when it states that “legal persons operating for profit and individual establishments of limited liability do not have the right to legal aid”[i].

Not accepting that decision, the legal person presented an action before the national first instance court where pleaded for the unconstitutionality of the mentioned article 7(3) of Portuguese legislation (Lei n.º 34/2004) and, simultaneously, for the infringement of article 47 of the CFREU.

The court ruled against the legal person because there was a “clear impracticability” in the litigation, understanding among others that the national legislation was not unconstitutional since article 20 of the Portuguese Constitution demands concretization approaches and, for that matter, the limitation steaming from the national legislation was not compromising the Constitution’s setting since other legal mechanisms could be used by the litigator so that it could react under financial stress.

However, the national court did not mention anything concerning EU law and the interpretation national legal rules should meet under EU general principles.

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Competition harms created by administrative legislation: a new approach to an ancient problem

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by, María Pilar Canedo Arrillaga, Professor at the University of Deusto and Jean Monnet Chair
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Competition law has a general aim of protecting markets against those actors that, for different reasons, break the rules of the game and obtain an extra-benefit harming competitors, consumers and society in general.

The traditional approach to competition law is to focus attention on undertakings – generally the most powerful because of different reasons – that find in the absolute freedom of laissez faire, the best opportunity to maximize their particular benefits not taking into consideration the general interest. Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU have been the most relevant tool to fight these practices both by the European Commission and the national or subnational authorities.

In the former 20 years attention has been given by different international Organizations (OEDC, UNCTAD) to the role played by the State in the harms generated in the markets. Article 107, TFUE (dealing with State Aid) was since the beginning of the European Market one of the concerns of the EU institutions but a new approach is needed in this field.

The many different levels of administration (central Governments, regions, provinces, mayors) have the power to create legislation that reduces competition by creating entry barriers in markets or by generating discrimination between economic actors.

Those administrations have an incredible economic power when they enter into public procurement procedures in order to guarantee services and products to de citizens. If those administrations don’t impose the principles of efficiency in their procedures, the services received by the population will be more expensive and will have lower quality.

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Data Protection Officer according to GDPR

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by André Mendes Costa, masters student at University of Minho
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In an ever changing world of information technologies, privacy and data protection inevitably attracts considerable attention.

The Portuguese Data Protection Law and the EU Directive 95/46 will be soon replaced by a new European and National legal framework. In fact, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) alters profoundly the paradigm of the personal data protection legal regime. The 679/2016 Regulation (GDPR) is part of a new European community legislative package which also includes a directive that lays down the procedures for dealing with personal data by the competent authorities for the purposes of prevention, research, detection and prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties. The Regulation came into force on 25th May and establishes a vacancy period of 2 years, providing the necessary time for the public and private sectors to equip themselves to face the new regulatory demands.

This brief analysis concentrates on the post of the data protection officer (DPO), on his/her duties and competencies and on those entities who are responsible for his/her appointment.

In the new European legislation there is an important change of paradigm in the protection of personal data namely the suppression – with a few exceptions contained in the Regulation – of the requisite of pre notification to the National Commission of Data Protection (NCDP). This change assigns to the person responsible for the processing of data the onus of legal guarantor of his/her cases, thus fully observing the Regulation. In fact, in the cases where there is no prior notification to the competent authority (NCDP), the Regulation has found other forms of guarantying that the processing of personal data is legally protected by creating the post of a data protection officer (DPO).
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Judicial review of EPPO procedural acts and decisions: a disruptive and resilient architecture?

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Crime Scene

by Luis de Lemos Triunfante, Judge-Second National Expert at Eurojust Portuguese Desk
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“The creation of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office will enable us to have the missing tools: kick investigations across the Union and exchange of information in real time. The European Public Prosecutor will work together with the Deputy Prosecutors of each of the 17 participating countries and congregate national expertise by coordinating them at EU level. The objective is to create a strong, independent and effective body that develops expertise in the fight against financial crime throughout the EU. The 17 Member States concerned will now move the process forward, hoping that others will join soon. The Commission has always defended the interest of all Member States and this initiative is open to all”, Sharing sovereignty to combat financial crime – Jean-Claude Juncker.

DH-CII (Human Rights Centre for Interdisciplinary Research), in collaboration with CEDU (Centre of Studies in EU Law) and the Union of Magistrates of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, organised, on 18 May at the Law School of the University of Minho, an International Criminal Law Congress about “The new challenges of Judicial and police cooperation in the European Union and the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office”.

The aim of that initiative was to bring to the discussion the main issues that lie today in judicial and police cooperation, mutual recognition, harmonization and the protection of human rights in the European Union. It also intended to analyse the challenges surrounding the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). In a special way, a critical and prospective look was taken on the Proposal for a Council Regulation establishing the EPPO under discussion, taking into account the current state of negotiations, the main aspects of substantive criminal law and substantive Criminal proceedings; the Statute and the institutional design of the EPPO (matters of institutional law) and the relations between the EPPO, Eurojust and OLAF.

One of the main issues of the EPPO is the judicial review.
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Editorial of June 2017

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by Alessandra Silveira, Editor
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Waiting for a federal big bang in EU? Updating the theory of federalism in times of liquid modernity

On May, 22-23, at Nova Law School, Lisbon, took place a conference on “The federal experience of the European Union: past, present and future”, organized by Professor Nuno Piçarra. Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome and twenty-five years after Maastricht, the EU may be living a true moment of “constitutional mutation” that may dramatically change its identity. Yes, it is possible to re-found the EU without revising the Treaties (as constitutional mutation is nothing new and it has been working since the beginning of the integration) and without committing “semantics imprudences” (avoiding the “blasted” nature of terms such as constitution and federation). Therefore, this is the right time to address the EU federative experience from an historic perspective and to analyse the role which such an acquis may play in the shaping of the future EU. For these reasons, the purpose of that conference was to tackle the following three questions. First, how should we evaluate the EU federative experience, sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome? Second, which are the main challenges facing the EU in the light of its federative experience? Third, do these challenges and respective answers suggest that the European federative dream is over, or just undergoing a new form of development?

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Modernisation and supermodernisation of the state aid law – silent deepening of European integration?

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by Ana Filipa Afonseca, student of the Master´s degree in EU Law of UMinho

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In general, the Member States have always had a bad understanding about the importance of the prohibition of the state aid, pursuant Article 107, TFEU, in fact, in 1966 and in 1987, the Member States rejected the proposal of the Commission to assume a legal definition of aid.

Truly, in the past – not so distant – Member States escaped the application of the prohibition of the state aid in a simple way: they didn’t notify the European Commission about the aid that they had conceded to their companies.

The importance of the state aid prohibition started to become clear to the Member States when they noticed this article plays an important role on improving the growth of the internal market. And the main reason this prohibition was learned by the Member States was due to its control for a non-differentiated growth of the Member States and distortion of competition. Besides that, it ended an obscure and dubious policy practice of the destination of public funds to the eyes of the citizens… until, shall we say, the beginning of the crisis in 2008.
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The latest on the Zambrano front – the Chavez-Vilchez judgment

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by Sophie Perez Fernandes, Junior Editor
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Back in 2011, the ECJ delivered a pivotal decision in the Zambrano case. With reference to the Rottmann case, the ECJ held that “Article 20 TFEU precludes national measures which have the effect of depriving citizens of the Union of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights conferred by virtue of their status as citizens of the Union.”

By this criterion are included within the scope of application of EU law situations which, a priori, fall within the competence of the Member States (the so-called purely internal situations). The Zambrano-criterion indeed allows EU citizens to rely on their status as EU citizens against their own Member States of nationality even when they have not exercised their rights of free movement. The immediate consequence of the Zambrano ruling was to preclude Member States (in casu, Belgium) from refusing third country national parents of minor EU citizens a right of residence in the Member State of residence and nationality of those children in so far as such decisions would result in the children having to leave the territory of the Union as a whole.

The subsequent case-law gave a rather narrow interpretation to the criterion, as can be confirmed by the judgments delivered in McCarthy, Dereci, Iida, O and S, Ymeraga, Alokpa and NA. The ECJ held the Zambrano-criterion as a specific criterion as it relates to “very specific situations” in which a right of residence may not, exceptionally, be refused to a third country national without the EU citizenship enjoyed by (minor) Member States nationals being (fundamentally) undermined. It thus follows that any right of residence conferred on third country nationals pursuant to Article 20 TFEU are rights derived from those enjoyed by the EU citizen of which they are members of the family and have, in particular, “an intrinsic connection with the freedom of movement and residence of a Union citizen”.

Without calling into question or reversing this line of jurisprudence, the ECJ seems however willing to revive the Zambrano-criterion in more recent cases, addressing some issues so far left in the open. In CS and Rendón Marín, though admitting the possibility of limiting the derived right of residence flowing from Article 20 TFEU to third country nationals (limitation based on grounds of public policy or public security), the ECJ framed the scope of such a limitation, making its application conditional on a case-by-case analysis and upon respect for fundamental rights as protected by the CFREU, namely Articles 7 and 24(2) CFREU. The ECJ further clarified the scope of the Zambrano-criterion as the ultimate link with EU law for the purposes of the protection of fundamental rights in the Chavez-Vilchez judgment delivered last week.
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