European Competition Law provides a wide-ranging review of the European rules relating to competition: restrictive agreements, abuse of a dominant position, impact of intellectual property rights, procedure, merger control, State aid.

European Competition Law

Market-sharing agreements, which tend to preserve the position of established undertakings and are usually set up by dominant undertakings, often market leaders or the beneficiaries of an exclusive deal, fall almost always under the purview of Article 101 TFEU . Effectively, the sharing of markets or clientele limits users' choice and causes increases in prices, and even reductions in production.  …

Conditions for prohibition

Market-sharing agreements, which tend to preserve the position of established undertakings and are usually set up by dominant undertakings, often market leaders or the beneficiaries of an exclusive deal, fall almost always under the purview of Article 101 TFEU . Effectively, the sharing of markets or clientele limits users' choice and causes increases in prices, and even reductions in production. It is not necessary to assess the actual impact of such agreements on the market for them to be caught by Article 101 of the Treaty .

However, if the parties can provide proof that a horizontal cooperation agreement, which includes a market-sharing arrangement, improves production or has an indispensable character, an individual exemption may be granted . This is not the case for an agreement to share national markets and to limit exports between competing producers located in two different Member States which simply causes the elimination of a competitor  or a patent settlement agreement and a patent licensing agreement, which, even if they pursue a legitimate aim, are also intended to share markets or otherwise restrict competition . Moreover, the fact that the market-sharing agreement is not “watertight” does not prevent it from being classified as a restriction of competition by object, since Article 101(1)(c) TFEU expressly prohibits agreements consisting in sharing markets, without limiting this prohibition solely to agreements which establish a “watertight” division between these markets, by means, for example, of provisions reserving access to certain of these markets to one of these undertakings to the exclusion of the other, or prohibiting exports from one market to another .

See Commission Notice No 2011/C 11/01 of 14 January 2011, Guidelines on the applicability of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functiaring of the European Union to horizontal cooperation agreements, at pt 3, stating that such agreements are likely to produce negative effects on the market.

Commission Notice No 2011/C 11/01 of 14 January 2011, at pts 128, 160, 205.

Commission Notice No 2011/C 11/01 of 14 January 2011, at pt 249, which stresses the importance of the question of the indispensable nature of restrictions for agreements involving market-sharing; See also at pt 185, which states that efficiency gains which benefit only the parties or cost savings resulting from the market-sharing cannot be taken into consideration.

Commission Decision No 70/487/EEC of 28 October 1970, Julien/Van Katwijk.

Case C-176/19 P Servier SAS, Judgment of 27 June 2024, LawLex202400004779JBJ.

Case C-176/19 P Servier SAS, Judgment of 27 June 2024, LawLex202400004765JBJ.

European Competition Law

82. Conditions for prohibition

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82. Conditions for prohibition

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Les décisions de justice citées dans ce paragraphe :

Les notions juridiques connexes

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au contenu exclusif Livv – juristes d’entreprise