Interview: Czech Competition Authority about Caselex

(Picture: Frettie – CC BY)

Which features of Caselex are particularly valuable for your authority’s work in the area of merger control, and how do they differ from other legal research tools?
The Czech Competition Authority likes in particular the filter “Jurisdiction“ which features in the Caselex Market Definitions (“Caselex“) as this feature makes it possible to focus our search for a relevant market definition on merger cases assessed by national competition authorities in European countries. While the European Commission deals in general with mergers of large undertakings that are active in wider territories (i.e. wider geographic markets), mergers assessed by the Czech Competition Authority are often of national (at most) or even local (or regional) scope, which is exactly the scope of geographic market (and mergers in these geographic markets) with which national competition authorities (rather than the European Commission) have vast experience.
That is why it is very important for the Czech Competition Authority to follow decision-making practice of other national competition authorities.

Being familiar with arguments and reasons other national competition authorities use when defining a relevant market makes it easier for us to plan the Czech Competition Authorityˈs investigation of a merger case as it helps us to identify (at the beginning of our investigation) key characteristics of how markets (which we are going to investigate) work. Then, in the course of our investigation we can look at these characteristics of markets in more detail and verify them. As we do not have at our disposal any other legal research tools (and do not have experience using them in practice) different from Caselex (and possibly MLex), we cannot compare Caselex to those other legal research tools.

In general, based on our experience using Caselex in practice (which dates back to 2020 when we started to use Caselex) the Czech Competition Authority considers Caselex to be an invaluable research tool regarding definitions of relevant markets.

What benefits does the structured and English-language presentation of merger control decisions in Caselex offer for your internal assessment processes?

Looking for a relevant market definition in Caselex saves us a lot of time as we are able to get a quick overview of how a relevant market for a specific product or service is defined in many national European jurisdictions (as mentioned above, our research focuses on European countries) and the European Commission.

The bottom line is that summaries are presented in English, which is very important for discussing a merger case within our case team.

How does Caselex contribute to the efficiency of merger review procedures, for example by reducing research time in Phase I or Phase II cases?

Using Caselex saves us a lot of time when we want to verify whether a relevant market definition for a specific product or service that merging parties suggest is in line with a decision-making practice of competition authorities.

This is true for prenotification stage as well as for merger procedure (which includes simplified procedure merger cases and standard procedure merger cases).

However, we cannot tell or estimate how much search time we are able to save by using Caselex.

For which types of merger cases or needs would you consider Caselex particularly valuable for competition authorities, and why?

Caselex is valuable for us in particular for searching relevant market definitions in local or regional markets as mergers of undertakings active in these local or regional markets are typically assessed by national competition authorities (while the European Commissionˈs focus is on mergers that take place in EEA-wide or global markets).

How does the Market Definitions module in Caselex support your authority in identifying, comparing, and applying relevant market definitions in complex or novel merger cases?

It is quite common that the Czech Competition Authority needs to define a relevant market for a product or service we have not assessed in our past practice. In these situations it is vital for us to search for a relevant market definition in Caselex.

Thank you for the interview!