On Wednesday 13 November, the General Court of the European Union ruled that the European Commission had validly considered that the parties to the Vodafone/Liberty Global merger were not competitors on the markets for the retail provision of television signal transmission services in Germany (judgments T-58/20, T-64/20 and T-69/20).
At the end of 2018, Vodafone announced its intention to acquire Liberty Global’s telecommunications businesses in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. In Germany, this transaction involved the acquisition of 100% of the shares in Unitymedia. After raising serious doubts about the compatibility of this transaction with the internal market, the Commission approved it in July 2019 (see EUROPE 12299/16).
Deutsche Telekom AG, Tele Columbus AG and NetCologne Gesellschaft für Telekommunikation AG applied to the General Court of the European Union to have the decision annulled, fearing Vodafone’s dominant position, particularly on the markets for the retail provision of television signal transmission services in Germany. According to these companies, the Commission made manifest errors of assessment as to the competitive effects of the transaction.
The General Court dismissed these actions as “unfounded”. In his view, the Commission did not err in considering that, prior to the merger, the merging parties were neither actual nor potential competitors on these markets and that the merger would therefore neither eliminate any competitive links between them nor give rise to a significant impediment to effective competition on the relevant markets.
Furthermore, the fact that a merger would create or strengthen a dominant position is not sufficient to consider that it would be incompatible with the Internal market. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)