Editorial

ABSTRACT

Pharmaceutical producers got the (non-binding and conditional) assurance that their cooperation aimed at avoiding shortages of vital medicines did not raise competition concerns.2 Information exchanges in matchmaking meetings in which undertakings operating at different levels of the value chain sought partners to ramp up the production and supply of vaccines, were also considered non-problematic.3 The Temporary Framework has now been withdrawn in favour of the all-purpose revised Informal Guidance Notice. [...]subsequently, this runs the risk that we will see informal guidance only in areas where the Commission and national competition authorities are already developing a rich body of decision-making practice. Because it is precisely in non-priority areas where questions unanswered by existing forms of guidance – on, for instance, the application of Article 101(3) TFEU - are most likely to persist. In this final issue of CoRe in 2022, Paul Gorecki discusses price signalling as a form of information exchange, a longstanding concern under EU competition law but one that has attracted only a limited number of infringement decisions.