The EU Google cases (Shopping and Android)

An event organised by the UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society
 

The EU Google cases (Shopping and Android):
A few critical remarks and a comparison of the two decisions

Speaker: Assimakis Komninos (White & Case Brussels)
Chair: Professor Ioannis Lianos (UCL)

About the talk

The European Commission has imposed, over the last two years, record-breaking fines against Google in Article 102 cases. The cases are now pending before the General Court of the EU and the Commission continues its assessment of Google’s compliance with these decisions. Does this signify a change of course for Article 102? Are we in uncharted territory or are the two cases safely anchored with standard EU precedents and principles? How should competition authorities deal with the challenges raised by platforms? Is regulation or competition law enforcement the appropriate way forward?

About the speaker

Assimakis Komninos is a partner at White & Case LLP Brussels. Assimakis advises on questions of EU and Greek competition law, EU business regulation, international arbitration, litigation and private international law. He has argued both of the only two competition preliminary reference cases to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) from Greece.

His practice focuses on complex cases of abuse of dominance, restrictive agreements and merger notifications, and he represents clients before the European Commission, national competition authorities, national courts and international arbitration tribunals.

Clients look to Assimakis for his proven track record and his ability to combine quietly resolving the most sensitive and complex investigations with aggressively litigating to achieve the necessary results. Chambers Global 2014 notes that he has "extensive experience and a deep understanding of competition law and economics."

Assimakis has acted before the ECJ in Syfait v. GlaxoSmithKline and Lélos v. GlaxoSmithKline (parallel trade of pharmaceuticals - abuse of dominance), and in GlaxoSmithKline Services v. Commission (parallel trade of pharmaceuticals - Article 101). He was also involved before the EU General Court in Microsoft v. Commission (compulsory licensing of interoperability information), GlaxoSmithKline Services v. Commission (parallel trade of pharmaceuticals - application of Article 101), Chalkor Metal Works v. Commission (copper plumbing tubes) Public Power Corporation v. Commission (Greek lignites) and EAEPC v. Commission (rejection of a complaint), representing GlaxoSmithKline. He also successfully represented Aegean Airlines in Aegean/Olympic II, which resulted in the European Commission clearing the deal in a Phase II proceeding. This was the first time that the Commission cleared a merger after it had previously prohibited it.

Assimakis has represented clients with excellent results in proceedings before the Albanian, Cypriot, French, Greek, Kosovo, Romanian and Russian competition authorities and Belgian, Bulgarian, Cypriot, French, Greek, Latvian, Spanish and Russian courts. He has particular experience in arbitration cases involving EU and national competition issues, and in private antitrust litigation cases in national courts. Notable clients include GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé/Nespresso, Coca-Cola HBC, SOCAR, OTE/Cosmote and TeliaSonera.

Assimakis is a former Commissioner and Member of the Board of the Hellenic Competition Commission (HCC).

Assimakis is currently a visiting fellow of the Centre for Law and Governance in Europe at University College London (UCL), a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Competition Law Centre (GCLC) at the College of Europe and a senior associate fellow of the Institute for European Studies (IES) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB). He is a prolific writer on legal matters and often gives speeches and seminars on EU competition law, arbitration and Greek law, and is a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network (ICN).

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