The European Commission (‘Commission’) plans to propose a new directive on the interaction of public antitrust enforcement and damage claims in June this year.

The Dutch National Association of General Practitioners (‘LHV’) calls on its members to restrict the freedom to establish their practices. For this reason the Dutch Competition Authority (‘NMa’) has therefore decided to impose a fine of EUR 7.719.000 on LHV. In addition, two LHV officials are imposed personal fines of EUR 50.000 and EUR 25.000 respectively, because the NMa holds them responsible for making LHV’s recommendations to its members.

On 20 December 2011 the European Commission has adopted a revised package of EU state aid rules for the assessment of public compensation for services of general economic interest (‘SGEI’). The package includes four instruments. With the entering into force of the package on 31 January 2012 the current policy will change on certain aspects.

The European Commission (‘Commission’) has fined the Dutch beer breweries Heineken, Bavaria and Grolsch in 2007 because of their involvement in a cartel on the Dutch beer market. The total amount of fines for these companies amounted EUR 273 million. The Court of First Instance (‘Court’) now judged this fine. This resulted in a reduction of the fines for Heineken and Bavaria. The fine imposed on Grolsch has been completely annulled.

Small undertakings get more room to make price-fixing agreements, in this way they might be able to compete better with large undertakings. Currently undertakings are only allowed to make price-fixing agreements in case their joint market share is not more than 5% and their joint turnover amounts not more than EUR 40 million. Under the new rules the market share limit will be extended to 10% and the turnover threshold will disappear. 

On 17 October 2011 the European Commission (‘Commission’) has adopted a package of measures aimed at increasing the transparency and fairness of competition proceedings. The package consists out of best practices guidelines on the conduct of antitrust proceedings, best practices for the submission of economic evidence and data collection, and a revised hearing officer mandate.

On 13 April 2011 the European Commission adopted a cartel settlement decision finding that Henkel, Procter & Gamble and Unilever operated a cartel in the market for powder detergent. According to the Commission the cartel was in operation from January 2002 until March 2005 and covered Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands.

The Dutch competition authority (“NMa”) has published her 2010 annual report with the title ‘Cooperation with the NMa’. The annual report provides an overview of the activities of the NMa in 2010 by way of a schedule with key figures and an extensive explanation of her fields of work. In the annual report different sectors are described. The NMa identifies the sectors processing industry, healthcare, financial and business service, general, energy and transport. Hereafter a short description of the annual report is provided.

The European Commission has welcomed The Netherlands' compliance with EU public procurement rules in two cases. Following the pursuit of infringement cases by the Commission, the Dutch authorities have now agreed to correctly apply EU public procurement rules.