Category: Fundamental Rights
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All change for the UK merger regime – Except the standard of review?
Traditionally, the UK has had a two-stage decision making process for merger cases. First, there were two separate organisations, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the Competition Commission (CC). The OFT would carry out the first phase review of a merger (“Phase 1”) and, if there were reasonable prospects that the merger would result…
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Balancing Fundamental Rights and Antitrust Enforcement: AG Medina’s Opinions on Email Seizures in IMI/Synlabhealth II
Do the fundamental rights to the protection of private life (Article 7 of the Charter[1]) and of personal data (Article 8 of the Charter[2]) preclude competition authorities from seizing professional emails during inspections without prior judicial authorisation? This is the question addressed by Advocate General (“AG”) Medina in her Opinions of 20 June 2024[3] (“First…