Superleague – Breaking Up Monopolies?

In his recent article in the Austrian Law Journal, Fabian Ziermann and his co-authors Dwayne Bach and Patrick Petschinka discuss whether the Superleague decision could lead to a de facto divestiture of monopolies, in the sense that monopolists would have to divest control rather than assets. This follows from two main pillars. First, the CJEU lowered the bar for a by object infringement under Art. 101 TFEU in Royal Antwerp, with Superleague holding that the Meca Medina exception does not apply to by object infringements, significantly limiting the type of conduct that can be exempted. Second, in the context of Art. 102 TFEU, Superleague introduced obligations similar to those of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on dominant undertakings that have the ability to regulate markets or market entry. Consequently, under Superleague any dominant undertaking may be subject to DMA-like criteria that limit the control it can exercise over markets.

The open access article is available here (in German) and here (in English).