By a Law dated 23 December 2016 , the Luxembourg legislator adopted Bill of law 7022 (a) implementing (i) Directive 2014/57/EU on criminal sanctions for market abuse as well as (ii) the Commission Implementing Directive 2015/2392/EU with regard to reporting to competent authorities of actual or potential infringements in relation to the market abuse regulation;
By Decision 2017-E-01 dated 8 March 2017, the Luxembourg Competition Council has accepted commitments offered by two companies operating in the passenger transport market in response to concerns regarding the conformity of their tender for public procurement contracts with competition law.
Following the adoption of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on 27 April 2016, most organisations began to re-examine their internal processes and procedures in order to ensure compliance with the new requirements before its entry into force in May 2018.
On 7 December 2016, competition law in Luxembourg was considerably strengthened by the entry into force of the law implementing EU Directive 2014/104, which is aimed at assisting victims of anti-competitive practices (cartel or concerted practice, agreement, other anti-competitive arrangement, abuse of a dominant position) in bringing actions for damages before the civil courts. This new law introduces several important provisions which will help victims to more easily establish the fault, i.e. the illegality of the conduct, of an undertaking which has infringed the rules of competition and quantify the harm suffered
On 26 July 2016, the Luxembourg Competition Council ("Conseil de la Concurrence") issued a decision in which it stressed that a resale price maintenance ("RPM") practice, i.e. an agreement or concerted practice between a supplier and a distributor leading to fixed or minimum prices for end users, constitutes a hard core and "by object" violation of EU and/or Luxembourg competition rules.
On 17 June 2016, the Luxembourg Competition Council adopted a decision in which it asserts, on the basis of Article 5 of the Law of 23 October 2011 on Competition and Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, its competence to scrutinise and, as the case may be, sanction transactions between businesses which create or strengthen a dominant position on the relevant market.
On 3 July 2016, the market abuse obligations and prohibitions provided in the updated EU legislation became applicable(1). The new set of legislation is composed at level 1 of a Regulation ("MAR") and of a Directive ("MAD 2").
Luxembourg still has no national merger control system meaning that, contrary to all other countries in the EU, mergers, acquisitions and creations of joint ventures potentially raising competition concerns in Luxembourg can proceed without the prior clearance by (and therefore prior notification to) the national competition authority, the Conseil de la concurrence, where the transaction has no EU dimension (and thereby no requirement for European Commission approval).
Luxembourg is the only country in the European Union ("EU") that has no prior merger control system. In principle, acquisitions do not fall within the scope of antitrust rules (prohibition of anticompetitive agreement and abuse of dominance).
The draft law n° 6968 on certain rules governing actions for damages for infringements of competition law (hereinafter the “Draft Law”) amends the law of October 23rd 2001 on competition law and transposes into Luxembourg law the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on antitrust damages actions dated 26 November 2014 (hereinafter the “Directive”).
