On Tuesday 1 March, the European Commission launched a public consultation inviting all interested parties to comment on two draft revised Horizontal Block Exemption Regulations on Research & Development (“R&D”) and Specialisation agreements (“R&D BER” and “Specialisation BER” respectively, together “HBERs”) as well as on the draft revised Horizontal Guidelines.
The aim is to adapt the current rules in specific areas where the evaluation has found that they were not fully adjusted to the economic and societal developments that occurred over the last ten years, such as the digital and green transition.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for Competition Policy, said the proposed revised rules aim to “keep up with developments so that beneficial cooperation can take place, for example when it comes to sustainability or data sharing”.
The new rules will come into force on 1 January 2023.
The proposed amendments (https://aeur.eu/f/k4 ) aim to achieve the following objectives:
- make it easier for companies to cooperate in areas such as R&D and production by clarifying the text of the HBERs and Horizontal Guidelines, adding new guidance on the application of the HBERs and slightly expanding the scope of the Specialisation BER to cover, for example, unilateral specialisation agreements concluded by more than two parties;
- ensure a continued effective protection of competition by exempting, from the EU competition rules, R&D agreements concerning entirely new products, technologies and processes and R&D efforts directed towards a specific objective, but not yet specific in terms of the product or technology, only if there are sufficient comparable competing R&D efforts;
- include a new chapter on the assessment of horizontal agreements pursuing sustainability objectives as well as new guidance on data sharing, mobile infrastructure sharing agreements and bidding consortia;
- simplify the administrative supervision carried out by the Commission and the National Competition Authorities (NCAs) by streamlining and updating the general framework for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements.
Interested parties are invited to submit their comments on the draft revised rules by 26 April 2022. The Commission is also publishing today the expert support studies.
Link to the consultation and useful documents: https://aeur.eu/f/k6 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)