On 5 December 2024, the ECJ issued its preliminary ruling in an Estonian vertical restrictions case.

The case concerned KIA’s car warranty being dependent on whether KIA owners carry out regular repair and maintenance not covered by the warranty with KIA instead of with independent repairers.

The Estonian competition authority had fined KIA for this practice as it considered that the requirement impeded access to independent repairers and to independent producers of spare parts. The Estonian authority had argued that this obligation had a potentially anticompetitive effect and therefore infringed the ban on anti-competitive agreements. In appeal, the referring court asked the ECJ whether the existence of potential anti-competitive effects was sufficient or whether actual/real effects had to be demonstrated.

The ECJ confirmed its case-law and confirmed, unsurprisingly, that the finding of (appreciable) potential anti-competitive effects suffice to demonstrate an infringement of article 101 TFEU. Interestingly however, the ECJ confirmed in what appears to be an obiter dictum explicitly that the effects-test under article 101 TFEU is the same as the effects-test under article 102 TFEU (for exclusionary abuses).

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