Dirk Auer on Google’s EU Fine

Politico Pro – ICLE Director of Competition Policy Dirk Auer was quoted by Politico Pro in a story about the pending General Court deliberations regarding the European Commission’s  record €4.34 billion fine against Google. You can read full story (behind a subscriber firewall) here.

“If they lose key parts of the Android case next week, it would be a really bad outcome for the Commission,” said Dirk Auer, director of competition policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, a U.S.-based research center backed by institutions and industry partners. “It could mean that almost [a] decade of competition enforcement, in this case, would be in part rejected by judges in Luxembourg.”

…“The EU courts are concerned that the Commission is not properly discharging its burden of proof when it comes to showing anti-competitive effects,” Auer said, referring to the recent EU court losses against Intel and Qualcomm, both cases of which involved rebate payments to buyers for exclusive deals.