September 23, 2019

The European Commission has published a Roadmap to evaluate Regulation 1217/2010/EU on the application of Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to certain categories of research and development agreements, and Regulation 1218/2010/EC on specialisation agreements (the Block Exemption Regulations for horizontal co-operation agreements). The roadmap also covers an evaluation of the Commission’s Guidelines on the applicability of Article 101 of the Treaty to horizontal co-operation agreements.

The purpose of the evaluation is to gather evidence on the functioning of the two Block Exemption Regulations in order decide whether the Commission should let them elapse, prolong their duration, or revise them in order to take proper account of new market developments since their adoption in 2010. The assessment will be based on the following evaluation criteria:

• relevance: whether the two Block Exemption Regulations and the Guidelines are still relevant in light of their objective, which is to exempt horizontal co-operation agreements that comply with Article 101(3) of the TFEU from the prohibition of Article 101(1);
• effectiveness: the extent to which the hardcore and excluded restrictions in the two Block Exemption Regulations and the Guidelines have proven effective in identifying those horizontal co-operation agreements that do not satisfy the conditions of Article 101(3);
• efficiency: whether the two Block Exemption Regulations and the Guidelines have contributed to reducing costs for both undertakings and the relevant competition authorities;
• coherence: whether the two Block Exemption Regulations and the Guidelines are in line with the developments of the Commission’s overall policy and practice in the field of EU competition law, including in the area of mergers and State aid; and
• EU added value: the extent to which the two Block Exemption Regulations and the Guidelines have contributed to ensuring a consistent application of Article 101(1) by both the competition authorities and the courts.

The Commission is also planning a 12-week consultation to start in Q4 2019 and a stakeholder workshop to take place next year.

The Commission is inviting feedback on its Roadmap by 3 October 2019. To read the Roadmap document in full and for details on how to give feedback, click here.