The BCA published its priorities paper 2025, and the least one can say is that it reflects an authority with plenty of ambition after being bolstered by additional resources.

Those wanting to submit a complaint to the BCA will want to know that the BCA will especially pay attention if the complaint concerns the agri-food value chain, construction, healthcare, basic services (including regulated professions, finance, banking, insurance, and energy and transport), or the digitalisation of the economy (including local platforms) and telecom. Incidentally, in many of these sectors, the BCA already has one or more pending cases which may come to a close this year.

2025 will also be the year of the first ever sector inquiry of the BCA (into price revision and indexation mechanisms), that of the preparation of a series of policy papers (on sustainability, on the BCA’s digital policy, and on competition rules in the context of employee mobility, including the use of no-poach agreements), as well as an update of existing guidance on bid rigging.

Interestingly, as many other competition authorities in the EU, also the BCA will investigate whether it should seek legislative changes for it to have a "call in" competence for mergers that fail to reach the EU and Belgian notification thresholds, and for a "New Competition Tool", so as to be able to impose binding remedies to remedy market distortions identified after a general or sectoral investigation.

Plenty of ambition, indeed, and we’ll keep you posted of developments as they occur.

In the meantime, you can read the priorities paper of the BCA in English, Dutch and French here.

#belgiancompetitionauthority #competitionlaw #antitrust #lawfirm #contrastupdate