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Competition Policy

ECN+ Directive

Overview

Council Regulation 1/2003 replaced the centralised notification and authorisation system with a decentralised system that is based on the parallel competence of the Commission and the national competition authorities and national courts of the Member States to enforce EU antitrust rules. It has created the European Competition Network (ECN), a forum for cooperation and coordination between the EU competition authorities (i.e. the Commission and the national competition authorities) on enforcement work and the basis for the creation and maintenance of a common competition enforcement culture in the EU. 

Since 2004, the Commission and national competition authorities have adopted approximately 1500 decisions (See, Statistics), investigating a broad range of cases in all sectors of the economy. From 2004 till 2021, more than 90% of the decisions that applied EU antitrust rules were taken by national competition authorities. Thus, it's essential that national competition authorities operate independently and have the powers to apply the EU antitrust rules effectively.

 

ECN+

The ECN+ Directive: making national competition authorities more effective enforcers

This proposal was prompted by the Commission's Communication on Ten Years of Council Regulation 1/2003, which identified a number of areas where action was needed to enable national competition authorities to be more effective.

Directive (EU) 2019/1 entered into force on 3 February 2019. Member States had to transpose the Directive in national law by 4 February 2021.

The Directive aims to ensure that when applying EU antitrust rules national competition authorities have the appropriate enforcement tools in order to bring about a genuine common competition enforcement area. To that end, the proposal provides for minimum guarantees and standards to empower national competition authorities to reach their full potential. More specifically, the Directive allows national competition authorities to:

  • benefit from minimum guarantees of independence when applying EU antitrust rules;
  • have the basic guarantee of the human, financial technical and technological resources they need to perform their tasks;
  • have an effective investigative and decision-making toolbox, including to gather digital evidence stored on mobile devices;
  • be able to impose effective, proportionate, and dissuasive fines;
  • have effective leniency programmes in place which encourage companies to report cartels throughout the EU;
  • provide each other with mutual assistance so that, for example companies with assets in other Member States cannot escape from paying fines.

The Report on the transposition of the ECN+ Directive 

On 29 November 2024, the Commission adopted a report to the Council and the European parliament on the transposition of the ECN+ Directive (all EU languages). The report focuses on how the main provisions of the ECN+ Directive have been transposed in the Member States that by then had completed the transposition process. 

The Report on the legal framework for and the use of interim measures by national competition authorities

On 5 September 2024, the Commission has adopted a Report to the Council and the European Parliament on the legal framework for and the use of interim measures by national competition authorities (all EU languages). 

The ECN+ Directive provides national competition authorities with the power to impose interim measures. Interim measures ensure that competition is preserved while an antitrust investigation is ongoing. In a declaration attached to the Directive, the Commission committed to ‘undertake an analysis of whether there are means to simplify the adoption of interim measures within the European Competition Network’. 

The report finds that national competition authorities that make more use of interim measures often have lighter procedural rules, sometimes coupled with less stringent legal requirements to impose those measures.

 

Background documents

The legislative procedure and the Commission proposal

Preparatory work

The Commission carried out a public consultation between November 2015 and February 2016 on empowering the national competition authorities to be more effective enforcers: Replies to the 2015 public consultation

On 19 April 2016, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament and the Commission's Competition Directorate General co-organised a Public Hearing on how to empower national competition authorities to be more effective enforcers.

View the entire Public Hearing.

Download the agenda and the presentations of the panellists.

The Commission's Communication on Ten Years of Council Regulation 1/2003 (COM (2014) 453) identified a number of areas of action to make the national competition authorities more effective enforcers:

  • Communication from the Commission - Ten Years of Antitrust Enforcement under Regulation 1/2003: Achievements and Future Perspectives en 
  • Commission Staff Working document - Ten Years of Antitrust Enforcement under Regulation 1/2003 en 

Commission Staff Working document - Enhancing competition enforcement by the Member States' competition authorities: institutional and procedural issues en