Insights

Washington – June 6, 2024: Crowell & Moring earned 78 rankings for 67 lawyers, as well as 41 national and statewide practice area rankings, in the Chambers USA 2024 guide. The rankings are driven by independent interviews of clients and lawyers at peer firms.

Brussels – May 22, 2024: Senior antitrust regulators from the European Commission, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority, and the U.S. Department of Justice will join industry and academic leaders for in-depth discussions at the Crowell & Moring and King's College London Sixth Annual EU Competition Law Conference on June 11 at TheMerode in Brussels.

Brussels and Doha – April 1, 2024: The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) 2024 edition has recognized 16 practice areas and 11 lawyers in Crowell & Moring’s Brussels and Doha offices. The 11 individual lawyers received 18 total rankings across the 16 different practice areas.

On August 1, 2024, the European Commission published its draft Guidelines on abusive exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings. Their adoption would mark the first major update in over 15 years of the Commission’s guidance on the application of the prohibition of abuse of dominance laid down in Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The Commission’s 2008 Guidance on enforcement priorities in applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to abusive exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings, which received only a limited update in 2023, were once hailed as a welcome move away from a legalistic, form-based approach to an effects-based approached informed by economics. Is the pendulum now swinging back to a more formalistic approach based on presumptions, shifting the burden of proof onto dominant undertakings and heralding an era of stricter enforcement?

On Tuesday, June 11, 2024, Crowell & Moring (Crowell) and King's College London co-hosted their 6thannual Competition Law Conference at TheMerode in Brussels. The event featured a keynote address by David Lawrence, Policy Director at the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and four panels of experts discussing the latest developments in competition law in the EU, UK and US. Key topics included the impact of AI and digital innovation, no-poach and non-compete provisions in the employment context, state aid and the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, and developments in merger enforcement. Distinguished speakers from the EU, UK and US, representing diverse perspectives from regulatory authorities, academia, and industry, shared their insights on these pressing issues.

The European Commission recently revised its Guidelines on Horizontal Cooperation Agreements. This alert is the fourth and last in a series of alerts in which we provide practical guidance, in light of these revised Guidelines, on how to make antitrust-related assessments for various types of agreements between competitors.

The European Commission is currently reviewing the Horizontal Block Exemption Regulations and the Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines. The revised regulations and guidelines will enter into force by the end of this year. The drafts reflect the Commission’s updated approach to horizontal cooperation issues such as joint purchasing, joint production, bidding consortia, information exchanges, etc. They also provide new guidance on agreements pursuing sustainability (ESG) goals. This webinar will focus on the key changes that inhouse counsel should be aware of.

In collaboration with the IBJ/IJEDamien Gerard, the new Prosecutor General of the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) and Griet Jans, Chief Economist at the BCA since 2020, will provide a snapshot of the BCA’s activities and ongoing projects. In addition to providing a state of play, they will discuss what’s to come for competition law in Belgium and the priorities of the BCA going forward.

Join us for a walk through the changed B2B landscape! 

On June 1, 2022, the various governments of Belgium reached a cooperation agreement on a screening regime for foreign direct investments (FDI). The new regime aims to protect Belgium’s national security, public order, and strategic interests. To that end, transactions in a wide range of sectors, and regardless of their size, will be subject to mandatory and suspensory notification to a new body, the Interfederal Screening Commission (ISC). The new regime is currently expected to enter into force by mid-2023.