The Article 102 compliance tool

The Guidelines replace the 2008 Guidance on enforcement priorities, which is withdrawn and ceases to apply 30 days after the Guidelines appear in the Official Journal.

A dominant company can still lower prices, innovate, build better products, integrate its operations and take customers from competitors. The line the Commission draws is between winning because the offer is better and weakening competitors by methods that restrict their ability to compete.

Two features matter in practice. The test at the conduct stage is whether the practice is capable of distorting competition, not whether it has already done so. And for some conduct a presumption applies: once certain facts are established, the conduct is presumed to distort competition, and it is the company that must produce evidence to displace that presumption.

The consequence is a change of timing rather than of principle. The reasons for a restrictive practice, the alternatives considered and the benefits expected have to exist as evidence before the practice is introduced. Reconstructing them after an investigation opens is not the same thing.

Work through the questions in order. Each one asks for something a company can answer from its own records; the last asks whether those records exist. Nothing you tick is sent anywhere or stored — use the print button to keep a copy.