Brussels, 30/05/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission published the Annual Report 2012 on competition policy on Tuesday 28 May, which shows that the Commission has been particularly active in ensuring the respect of competition rules in areas of importance to the economy, such as financial services, network industries (energy, telecoms and postal services) and knowledge-based sectors such as e-books, smartphones and pharmaceutical products.
When it comes to monitoring state aid, the past year saw the first decisions applying the new framework on state aid for services of general economic interest (SGEIs) adopted at the end of 2011. In May 2012, the Commission launched an even more ambitious reform agenda with the state aid modernisation (SAM) initiative, whose main regulations were discussed at the Competitiveness Council on Wednesday. The Commission has continued to fight against price-fixing and taken important decisions including fining seven cathode ray manufacturers a total of €1.5 billion for price-fixing.
Financial sector. In the financial sector, the Commission continued to apply the state aid rules to make sure that banks receiving aid were either resolved in an orderly fashioned or were thoroughly restructured in order to return to long-term viability. There was significant intervention in Ireland, Portugal and Greece, along with Spain, where rapid and effective application was seen to rescue Spanish banks. The planned merger of Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext was not allowed to take place.
Network industries. In the gas and electricity sectors antitrust enforcement action focused on Central and Eastern European gas networks which tend to be less interconnected across borders than western European networks. The Commission opened antitrust proceedings against Gazprom in relation to a possible abuse of its dominant position in a number of Central and Eastern European gas markets and the Commission fined Telefonica and Portugal Telecom €79 million for their agreement not to compete with each other on the Iberian telecommunications markets.
Digital. In digital industries, where technical innovation is essential, the Commission launched three proceedings concerning possible abuse by Samsung and Motorola of their standard essential patents. It accepted the commitments offered by Apple and several publishers to restore competition in the sale of e-books, and the sale of the publishing and music businesses of EMI was approved subject to conditions.
Pharmaceuticals. The Commission issued a number of statements of objections concerning potentially anticompetitive conduct and agreements to prevent the entry of generic medicines. The full report can be found at: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/publications/annual_report/index.html . (FG/transl.fl)