Authored by Dr. Zhan Hao (zhanhao@anjielaw.com) and Song Ying(songying@anjielaw.com) and Tian Chen (tianchen@anjielaw.com)at AnJie Law Firm

1.Introduction

The concept of abuse of collective market dominance (“Collective Abuse”)stems from Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”), (formerly Article 82 of the European Community Treaty) and was first acknowledged by the EU General Court in 1992.

According to Article 102 of the TFEU, Collective Abuse refers to two or more undertakings abusing their concentrated market dominance based upon some kind of connection between/among them. However, since there are no specific applicable rules for this concept under EU competition laws or guidelines, and with the concept being applied in only a few cases under EU competition law practice, from an antitrust perspective, the relevant competition issues have to some extent not been solved. Hence, there is still plenty of theoretical and practical space to discuss those issues. For these reasons, this article is written from three aspects of this topic as follows, with the intention of shedding light on the rationale behind this concept, and the precautions to take when applying Collective Abuse.
 

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