Training of national judges in EU Competition Law

Deadline: Jan 15, 2021  
CALL EXPIRED

1. INTRODUCTION

On 17 October 2013 the European Parliament and the Council adopted Regulation (EU) No 1382/20131 establishing a Justice Programme for the period 2014-2020. One of its specific objectives is to support and promote judicial training, including language training on legal terminology, with a view to fostering a common legal and judicial culture.

On 5 November 2019, the European Commission adopted the work programme for 2020 and the financing for the implementation of the Justice Programme2 which provides for the publication of a call for proposals to support national or transnational projects on judicial training in competition law. Thus, grants may be awarded to support and promote judicial training with a view to foster a common legal and judicial culture of competition law.

The measures planned for the training of national judges and judicial cooperation will be referred to hereafter as the 'projects'.

Bodies which introduce proposals are referred to hereafter as the 'applicants'. Successful applicants which have been allocated a grant are described as the 'beneficiaries'.

2. OBJECTIVES

The objective of this call for proposals is to co-finance projects aiming to train national judges in the context of enforcing European competition rules. This includes public and private enforcement of both the Antitrust rules and the State aid rules. The final aim is to ensure a coherent and consistent application of EU competition law by national courts.

These objectives can best be achieved through projects which specifically focus on the role of national judges in the application of EU competition law, their particular needs and work environments and pre- existing training and knowledge.

2.1. Scope and expected results

Projects must meet the above-mentioned objectives and clearly demonstrate their EU added-value, i.e. that Union intervention in the form of funding through this grant programme can bring additional value compared to the action of Member States alone. The European added value of actions, including that of small-scale and national actions, shall be assessed in the light of criteria such as their contribution to the consistent and coherent implementation of Union law its potential to develop mutual trust among Member States and to improve cross-border cooperation, its transnational impact, its contribution to the elaboration and dissemination of best practices or its potential to create practical tools and solutions that address cross-border or Union-wide challenges.

Contents of the projects should be tailored to the needs of the target audience. Projects should be designed using practice-oriented learning methods and/or innovative learning methods (including case studies, blended learning, and simulations). The results of the projects should have a broad and long- lasting effect.

2.2. Target audience

The target audience must consist of national judges dealing with competition cases, as defined in section 2 Objectives, at national level. This also includes prosecutors, apprentice national judges, and the staff of national courts of eligible countries3.

The target audience as defined above is hereafter referred to as 'national judges'.

Judges from countries not listed as eligible countries and persons other than national judges may participate in the projects, provided that a significant proportion of the audience consists of national judges. However, the costs linked to their participation cannot be included as eligible costs.

3. TIMETABLE AND BUDGET AVAILABLE

a) Publication of the call

15 September 2020

b) Deadline for submitting applications

15 January 2021

c) Evaluation period

February – June 2021

d) Information to applicants

July 2021

e) Review of budgets

July – August 2021

f) Signature of grant agreement and start date of the action

September – October 2021

g) Info day in Brussels for successful applicants

October / November 2021

Applicants will be informed of the results of the assessment of their projects as soon as possible. However, applicants should be aware that the whole grant award procedure may take up to 9 months from the final date to submit proposals.

3 For the purposes of this Call, the term "eligible countries" shall mean the EU Member States with the exception of Denmark and including the EU candidate countries Albania and Montenegro. As mentioned in Recital 34 and 35 of Regulation 1382/2013, DK has not taken part in the adoption of the aforementioned Regulation and are therefore not bound by it or subject to its application. If, before the deadline for submission of proposals, other countries (EEA countries, candidate countries) join the programme, a notification will be placed on the call website informing applicants that organisations from such countries can participate as applicants or partners.

The total budget earmarked for the co-financing of projects submitted under this call is estimated at EUR 900.000.

The maximum grant that can be awarded is EUR 300.000 and the minimum is EUR 30.000. The Commission reserves the right not to distribute all the funds available.

4. SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE PROJECTS

Projects should include tailored training activities on EU competition law such as:

• -  conferences;

• -  interactive, practice-oriented seminars and workshops;

• -  multilateral exchanges between national judges;

• -  joint study visits to EU courts;

• -  creation of training materials and tools for face-to-face training, blended learning or e-learning such as handbooks, manuals, case-law databases, train-the-trainer events, networking platforms, videos, podcasts, etc. in combination with organisation of training activities.

  Projects should provide advanced and in-depth training activities for national judges. Trainings should be hands-on oriented, include case studies, refer to the relevant case law of the European Court of Justice and include an analysis of relevant EU jurisprudence.

  The environment in which participative training for national judges takes place must be made sufficiently secure to enable participants to freely exchange views and experiences and to learn from one another, without external monitoring or interference. Projects are therefore at best exclusively addressed to national judges.

  4.1. Thematic Priorities

  Projects should address at least one of the priorities listed below but may address more than one.

  Priority 1: Training on the application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and relevant secondary law, such as the block exemption regulations.

  Applicants are invited to choose at least 3 out of the 6 topics listed below:

1. a)  Scope of application of Article 101 (concept of undertaking, concept of agreement and concerted practice);

2. b)  Restrictions by object and effect under Article 101;

3. c)  Concept of dominance under Article 102;

4. d)  Exclusionary and exploitative (in particular excessive pricing) abuses under Article 102;

5. e)  Concept of effect on trade between Member States;

6. f) The Block exemptions for vertical agreements4, production and specialisation agreements5, R&D agreements6 and technology transfer agreements7, including related guidelines.

Priority 2: Training activities focusing on national laws implementing Directive 2014/104 on antitrust damages actions8. The aim of these projects is to facilitate judges' ability to apply the new rules in an accurate and coherent manner.

Applicants are invited to choose at least 2 out of the 5 topics listed below:

1. a)  The disclosure of evidence in proceedings relating to an action for damages;

2. b)  The passing on of overcharges and the interplay between damages actions relating to the same infringement but instituted by injured parties on different levels of the supply chain;

3. c)  The quantification of antitrust harm in the framework of damages actions, including the application of the methods for quantification identified in the Commission's Practical Guide on the Quantification of Antitrust Harm9;

4. d)  The interaction between the public and the private enforcement of competition law, focussing on both the positive interaction (how can claimants benefit from enforcement action by competition authorities) and measures to avoid negative interactions (for example limits on the disclosure of evidence and on the joint and several liability);

5. e)  Case management and best practices in dealing with questions of jurisdiction and applicable law and in dealing with the situation of parallel or subsequent proceedings in different Member States.

Priority 3: Training activities focusing on underlying economic principles of competition law. Applicants are invited to choose at least one topic:

a) Economic principles and economic reasoning (e.g., supply and demand, cost analysis, substitution and strategic interactions in different competition environments, market definitions, horizontal and vertically related markets, market power);

b) Assessment of economic evidence/studies in litigation and its procedural handling, including a review of currently used estimation methods (qualitative and quantitative), underlining advantages and limits of them, as well as the importance of consistency, robustness and duplicability of results.

Priority 4: Training activities focusing on the application of competition law in regulated industries (such as the energy, telecommunications or pharmaceutical sector).

Applicants are invited to choose at least one topic:

1. a)  Scope of application of competition law in regulated sectors;

2. b)  Concepts of an undertaking and of an association of undertakings applied to public bodies (i.e. public bodies as undertakings vs public bodies as regulatory bodies).

Priority 5: Training activities focusing on how to apply the traditional competition law concepts in Articles 101 and 102 to digital markets.

Applicants are invited to choose at least 1 out of the 3 topics listed below:

1. a)  Market definition in digital markets (including two or multisided markets, zero price markets);

2. b)  Assessment of market power and dominance in digital markets (including direct and indirect network effects, dynamic efficiencies, importance of access to data, single- and multi-homing);

3. c)  Recent case law and decisional practice regarding digital markets and more generally potential theories of harm including new forms of collusion (use of algorithms), refusal to provide access to infrastructure (big data).

Priority 6: Training on State Aid, in light of State Aid Modernisation and the enforcement role of national courts.

Applicants are invited to choose at least 2 out of the 4 topics listed below:

1. a)  Notion of aid10 (including the method of financing of the aid through parafiscal levies and the Services of General Economic interest11);

2. b)  The regulations adopted in the framework of the State aid modernization exercise, i.e. mainly the De minimis Regulation12 and the General Block Exemption Regulation13;

3. c) The role of national courts in implementing State aid law (based on the notice on the enforcement of State aid law by national courts14 and on the Recovery notice15). Particular attention should be paid to the use of cooperation tools16 available to national courts;

4. d) The request for provisional measures brought before the courts and its interaction with the EU Court proceedings.

Proposals outside of the priority topics

The above policy priorities are indications of possible topics for supported projects. Proposals not in line with these topics, may still be awarded grants if the applicants can justify their suggested training topics by a convincing evidence-based training needs assessment, demonstrating that more training is needed for the proper application of EU competition law in the suggested field.

4.2. Preferences

Preference will be given to projects that:

1. a)  Provide for trainings foreseeing consecutive levels, building up one on another;

2. b)  Do not simply duplicate/overlap existing/planned training material or existing/future projects of other training providers at national level but that act in complementarity or that innovate;

3. c)  Address judges from several member states in one training and thus encourage networking17.

5. ADMISSIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

In order to be admissible, applications must be:

•   sent no later than the deadline for submitting applications referred to in section 15.4;

•   submitted in writing and sent by post (see section 15) using the application form and its annexes available at http://ec.europa.eu/competition/calls/proposals_open.html;

•   drafted in one of the EU official languages (for reasons of efficiency, the Commission advises applicants to use English).

Failure to comply with those requirements will lead to the rejection of the application

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