As an integral part of competition law, companies should carefully monitor opportunities for state aid from national authorities, such as investment or labour subsidies, R&D or sustainability incentives and tax breaks. In this context, our advice and assistance includes the following areas of expertise:
- exclusivity, non-compete and other restrictive contractual clauses;
- pricing practices, including discounts, rebates, temporal and geographic price discrimination, as well as related commercial strategies;
- horizontal and vertical agreements, including distribution, licensing, technology transfers, commercialisation deals and joint ventures;
- structuring of mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures from a competition law perspective;
- merger notifications and calculation of notification thresholds;
- concerns with respect to dominant market positions and the impact on the (execution of) commercial strategies;
- abuse of economic dependence; and
- state aid compliance, subsidies, public undertakings and services of general economic interest.
In relation to the above expertise, we also represent your interests before national and EU courts or competition authorities (including the Belgian Competition Authority and European Commission) and actively assist you in determining pragmatic legal strategies tailored to your business. We closely combine our competition law insights with extensive expertise in EU internal market and regulatory laws (as detailed below) to provide you with one-stop-shop comprehensive solutions.
