Insights | September 20, 2019

Roschier Insights Seminar, key takeaways: Current trends in competition law

The Nordic competition authorities have recently enforced their cooperation by concluding a pan-Nordic cooperation agreement and the amount of cross-border cases is on the rise. Because of that, the time was right for the Roschier EU & Competition team to share their views on recent Nordic cross-border trends and decision practice as well as other current developments with practical effects.

Christian Wik and Julia Vahvaselkä took a comprehensive look at the Nordic cooperation and several recent enforcement cases in the Nordics. They noted that the recently concluded cooperation agreement means that competition authorities can share even confidential information, concerning investigations or proceedings, as well as send requests for information on each other’s behalf.

The competition authorities can also carry out dawn raids or other fact-finding measures on each other’s behalf, regardless of whether the behavior being investigated actually has a cross-border effect.

Moving on, this breakfast seminar for clients focused on merger control and particularly procedural questions. Ami Paanajärvi and Harri Puskala gave an overview of some recent legislative developments. A lively discussion arose on reflections from the approach the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (FCCA) has taken in recent merger control cases and the lessons learned therefrom. All-in-all it was concluded that the FCCA seems to be strengthening its review procedures, moving towards what we have seen earlier from the European Commission. This entails more thorough pre-notification processes and information and document requests throughout the investigation.