EasyBlog

The EU has increasingly been implementing within the framework of its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), besides the binding Resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, its own autonomous restrictive measures or sanctions.

DG TRADE is organizing a full one day conference at which it will set out how the European Commission intends to implement the provisions of the EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement  (the FTA text is available here)

The EU Commission's anti-trust officials accompanied by their national counterparts carried out simultaneous dawn raids on Tuesday morning (27/09/2011) across the EU.  The number of locations reported to have been raided makes this one of DG COMP's largest dawn raid operations to date.

There has been a clear upsurge of antitrust dawn raid activity in the EU since a couple of weeks (map below) in a wide range of sectors.  With the summer break over for antitrust officials throughout the EU,  now would be a good time to dig up and revise those antitrust dawn raid manuals, in particular the emergency contact details of your company’s listed dawn raid team members.

The Dutch authorities have announced that during autumn 2011 they will be specifically targeting importers and producers of household lighting who will have to prove that their products comply with EU Ecodesign legislation (Directive 2009/125/EC).  Failure to prove compliance will result in the products being refused entry onto the EU market and likely prosecution for those involved.

The UK National competition authority - The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) - has published on its website (here) a number of new competition guidance notices for companies doing business in the UK. Although these are geared specifically to the UK market, they concern matters of general application across the EU and can therefore be a valuable resource for all EU compliance programmes.