Hogan Lovells (LexBlog Austria)

Karl Pörnbacher, head of the Hogan Lovells International Arbitration team in Germany, delivered the keynote speech at Vienna Arbitration Days 2021, which was held remotely on 12 February and focused on innovation and constants within construction arbitration. Read on to discover the key takeaways from Karl’s speech. Constants of construction arbitrations include, notably, their complexity...

In September 2016, the European Commission granted a 30% fine discount to Altstoff Recycling Austria for cooperating with an investigation into its alleged abuse of a dominant position in the Austria waste management market (see our previous post here). The discount was granted on the basis of Paragraph 37 of the 2006 Fining guidelines, which allows...

Guests entering hotel rooms expect to be able to turn on the TV or listen to the radio. Accordingly, TVs and radios feature in almost any hotel room around the world. However, this commodity has been the trigger for numerous legal disputes in recent years. As always, the quarrel is about money. In this post...

On 20 September 2016, the European Commission fined Altstoff Recycling Austria (“ARA”) under Article 102 TFEU for abusing its dominant position in the Austrian waste management market by blocking its downstream competitors from reasonable access to its necessary upstream infrastructure. What’s unique in this case is that the EC granted ARA a 30% discount for...

What is nowadays to be seen as a “programme“? And, what does characterize the “principal purpose” of a video section offered in the electronic version of a newspaper? These questions have been submitted to the Court of Justice of the European Union lately. On 21 October, the judges handed down their decision thereby clarifying some...

What is nowadays to be seen as a “programme“? And, what does characterize the “principal purpose” of a video section offered in the electronic version of a newspaper? These questions have been submitted to the Court of Justice of the European Union lately. On 21 October, the judges handed down their decision thereby clarifying some...

The European Commission recently published a consultation paper that invites comments on a proposal to allow review of the acquisition of non-controlling minority shareholdings. The proposed reform is the most significant in the last 10 years and could have a huge impact on many corporate transactions. Under the current E.U. Merger Regulation, the commission only...

The European Court of Justice held on October 16, 2012 that Austria's data protection authority is not sufficiently independent, and therefore fails to comply with the requirements of the European data protection directive. The Court found that Austria's DPA has too many links to the Austrian Federal Chancellery and that the EU Data Protection Directive's requirement of "complete independence" is