EU Commission Call For Contributions On 'Competition Policy Supporting The Green Deal'

• Published date: 26 October 2020
• Subject Matter: Anti-trust/Competition Law, Environment, Antitrust, EU Competition , Environmental Law, Climate Change
• Law Firm: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
• Author: Mr Maurits Dolmans, Robbert Snelders, Richard Pepper and Frédéric De Bure

On October 13, 2020, the European Commission published a call for contributions to determine if and how EU competition policy can better support the European Green Deal.

The European Green Deal is a comprehensive action plan aimed at making Europe the world's first climate neutral continent by 2050. ¹ On September 22, 2020, Mrs. Vestager explained that "[t]o succeed, everyone in Europe will have to play their part - every individual, every business, every public authority. And that includes competition enforcers." ²

The Commission encourages companies from all business sectors to provide examples of sustainability initiatives they are pursuing, or would like to pursue. The deadline is November 20, 2020. The goal is to harmonize competition policy EEA-wide.

Scope of the discussion

While acknowledging that competition policy cannot replace environmental laws and regulation, or green investments, this call for contributions aims at understanding how EU competition law can complement the proposed EU Climate Law and extended emissions trading scheme.

Contributions are expected to cover all areas of competition policy: ³

• State aid The Commission asks whether, in the context of the upcoming consultation on the revision of State aid rules, sustainable objectives should be better taken into account. In particular, stakeholders are expected to discuss whether to amend the Guidelines on State aid for environmental protection and energy to limit or ban aid for activities with negative environmental impact and/or enhancing State aid for environmentally beneficial projects (like the so-called "green bonus" for projects that genuinely contribute to sustainable development).
• Antitrust The Commission asks whether specific guidelines and/or treatment should apply to horizontal and vertical agreements between undertakings pursuing the Green Deal objectives. The comments the Commission received on the consultation on the Guidelines for Horizontal Agreements indicate a demand for better and more permissive guidance on sustainability agreements ⁴ The Commission does not explicitly call for comments on abuse of dominance rules, but does not exclude comments this area either.
• Merger control. The Commission calls for suggestions as to how merger control rules can better contribute to protecting the sustainability objectives of the Green Deal.

The rising debate on sustainability and competition policy

A key question in this debate is whether competition rules should be...