All the fools of Brussels on the American Qualcomm
The European antitrust authorities will not appeal against the cancellation of the fine to Qualcomm. It is a detriment to Commissioner Vestager, in view of the September 14 ruling on Google. All the details
The antitrust authorities of European countries will not appeal against the ruling of the Court of the European Union, which overturned a 997 million euro fine to Qualcomm, a US company that produces chips . This was revealed by some sources to the Reuters agency.
WHAT THE COURT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS ESTABLISHED
In June, with a ruling, the Court of the European Union – the second most important court of the bloc, based in Luxembourg – in fact criticized the handling of the Qualcomm case by the European Union, stating that some procedural irregularities had compromised the company's right of defense.
The court also invalidated the European Commission's reconstruction, according to which Qualcomm had made anti-competitive payments to Apple. "The Commission," the ruling reads , "did not provide an analysis to support the conclusions that the payments in question actually reduced Apple's incentives to switch to Qualcomm's competitors to obtain supplies of LTE chipsets for some iPad models to be launched in 2014 and 2015 ".
THE CASE QUALCOMM-APPLE
In 2018, the Commission's competition directorate accused Qualcomm of paying Apple billions from 2011 to 2016 to use its chips exclusively for iPhones and iPads, with the aim of harming competing companies such as Intel.
WHAT COULD HAPPEN
The European Commission can appeal against the judgment of the General Court by appealing to the Court of Justice of the European Union. He declined to comment on Reuters .
VESTAGER TAKES THE SHOT
The agency writes that the ruling represents a "major setback" for European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, known for her attempts to subject major American technology companies, also known as Big Tech or GAFA, to more stringent regulation. : imposed a billionaire fine on Google (a company controlled by Alphabet) and launched investigations on Amazon, Meta (the parent company of Facebook) and Apple.
On September 14, the Court of the European Union will rule on the appeal filed by Google against the fine of 4.3 billion (a record) issued against it by the management of Vestager, which accuses the company of having used its operating system to Android mobile devices to restrict competition in the industry.
Vestager already suffered a major defeat last January, when the General Court of the European Union overturned a € 1.06 billion fine imposed on Intel in 2009. The company was accused of hindering competition from rival Advanced Micro. Devices by offering discounts on its components to computer manufacturers such as Dell and HP.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/qualcomm-antitrust-unione-europea/ on Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:13:00 +0000.