Brussels, 21/01/2000 (Agence Europe) - This week, the European Commission authorised the Commissioner for Competition, Mario Monti, to open consultations on the review of rules applicable to agreements between rival companies ("horizontal" agreements). Three texts will soon be presented to the Consultative Committee on concerted agreements (where Member States are represented) before being published and being the subject of a broad consultation within industry and third parties. A public hearing on the issue will be held in May of this year.
It is a question of two draft regulations on "group exemptions" applicable to specialisation agreements and research and development agreements, as well as "guidelines" for the exemption of horizontal cooperation agreements. These texts will replace existing legislation that expires in December 2000.
Along the same lines as the regulation on "vertical" distribution agreements, that the European Commission adopted on 22 December last (see EUROPE of 23 December, p.5), two criteria should govern the right of exemption: the nature of the agreement and market share. The obligation to notify agreements would be abolished and agreements representing less than 30% of accumulated market share would benefit a priori from an group exemption. The "white" list of types of authorised agreements would be replaced by a "black" list of explicitly prohibited cases, regarding, or example, price fixing; output limitation; sharing the market, consumers or sources of supply.
The goal set out by the Commission is to reduce the bureaucratic burden on small and medium-sized companies in particular, and enable its competition services to concentrate on agreements that are really harmful for consumers, suppliers or rivals. According to its analysis of cases examined in the past under Article 81 of the Treaty, 58% of cases of horizontal cooperation agreements are not covered by group exemption, but the number of concerted agreements posing problems of competition is limited.
This consultation comes within the framework of a vast reform of European rules of competition launched by the Commission. Its April 1999 White Paper on the modernisation of rules of competition (Articles 81 and 82 o the Treaty) has just been the subject of a debate in the European Parliament (see EUROPE of 15 January, p.7 and 19 January, pp.12/13). Other than the rules for horizontal agreements, the executive has also begun initial consultations on the group exemption regime for the automotive sector, which expires in October 2002.