Rabaty warunkowe udzielane przez przedsiębiorstwa dominujące w prawie konkurencji Unii Europejskiej

While the granting of rebates is a common commercial practice largely used by dominant and non-dominant firms, the assessment of rebates is one of the most complex and unsettled areas of competition law. In the European Union, the decisional practice of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union has been harshly criticized as unnecessarily strict, following a form-based approach that sits uneasily with modern economic theory. The degree of divergence between US and European case law on the proper legal treatment of loyalty rebates is larger than in almost any other fi eld of international antitrust law. Whereas US jurisprudence has traditionally considered loyalty rebates to be a pro-competitive business practice, the Court of Justice of the European Union has repeatedly held that loyalty rebates are an illegal means of distorting competition.