Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments October 13, 2022 erstellt
Beschreibung:
The General Court’s annulment of the European Commission’s finding that Intel’s conditional rebate scheme was an abuse of dominance underscores the Court’s readiness to scrutinise in detail the economic analysis, including the so-called as-efficient competitor (AEC) test. This paper critically reviews some of the key errors that the Commission, according to the Court, made in relation to the implementation of that test, focusing on some of its main ingredients, namely the contestable share of the market, the conditional portion of the rebates, and the relevant cost benchmark. We conclude that the Court’s assessment provides useful lessons for how to perform thorough and robust economic analysis not only within the context of an AEC test but in competition cases more generally. At the same time, considering the test’s intrinsic limitations, we find that, aside from the test’s implementation, its informative value should also be explored, based on economic theory and the facts of the case