Määräävän markkina-aseman väärinkäyttö/EN

Suomeksi

Abuse of a dominant market position is prohibited under the Competition Act and Article 102 TFEU regardless of how the dominant position arose — the prohibition targets specifically the exploitation of that position, not the position itself.

Avainkohdat

• Mistä on kyse: Abuse may be either exclusionary — foreclosing competitors from the market — or exploitative — directly extracting value from customers or consumers — and it is assessed, as a rule, on an effects basis.
• Miksi sillä on kaupallista merkitystä: Infringing the prohibition on abuse can result in a significant fine and liability in damages, and EU case law continues to develop — for example, the Intel case significantly changed how rebate schemes are assessed.
• Mikä menee useimmin pieleen: Many otherwise ordinary commercial practices (loyalty rebates, exclusive-purchasing obligations, the bundling of certain business lines) can become a serious competition law risk if the undertaking holds a dominant market position.

Forms of Abuse

Section 7 7 § of the Competition Act (Finnish text) lists, by way of example, the following forms of abuse:

• unfair prices or trading conditions — both excessively high (exploitative/excessive pricing) and excessively low (predatory pricing);
• limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers;
• discrimination — applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions without an acceptable justification; and
• tying — making the conclusion of a contract subject to an additional obligation which has no connection with the subject of the contract.

In addition to these, case law has also identified, among others, exclusivity and loyalty rebates, margin squeeze in the case of a vertically integrated dominant undertaking, and the artificial delay of competitors' market entry.

The Intel Case and the Assessment of Rebate Schemes

The judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-413/14 P (Intel v Commission, 2017) significantly changed the way exclusivity rebates are assessed: previously, such rebates were regarded as, in principle, automatically prohibited, but the Court required that, where an undertaking puts forward substantiated arguments that its rebate scheme was not capable of restricting competition, the Commission must assess all the circumstances as a whole — including the so-called as-efficient-competitor test (the AEC test). In January 2022, the General Court partially annulled the Commission's 2009 decision as regards the rebate scheme, on account of the inadequacy of the AEC assessment, but upheld the finding of infringement as regards the so-called "naked restrictions" (direct payments intended to prevent or delay the sale of computers based on competing AMD processors). On 22 September 2023, the Commission adopted a new decision imposing a new fine of €376.358 million for the remaining infringement. On 24 October 2024 (C-240/22 P), the Court of Justice dismissed the Commission's appeal against the partial annulment of the original decision, with the result that the original fine of €1.06 billion relating to the rebate scheme can no longer be recovered at any stage. The General Court, for its part, further reduced the new fine imposed by the September 2023 decision by around 37% in its judgment of 10 December 2025 (Case T-1129/23), to €237.1 million.

Guidelines on the Application of Article 102 TFEU (2026)

On 19 June 2026, the European Commission issued, for the first time, comprehensive guidelines on the application of Article 102 TFEU (and, correspondingly, section 7 of the Competition Act) to exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings — the culmination of a three-year consultation process. The Guidelines replace the 2009 Guidance on the Commission's enforcement priorities and consolidate roughly two decades of case law.

The Guidelines' central assessment framework is based on a two-step test: first, it is assessed whether the conduct departs from competition on the merits and is capable of producing exclusionary effects, after which the undertaking may put forward an objective justification (for example, efficiencies or necessity). The assessment also applies a three-tier system of presumptions: (1) so-called "naked restrictions", which have no commercial rationale whatsoever, are prohibited in principle without a separate effects assessment; (2) for five named categories of conduct (exclusive-purchasing obligations, predatory pricing, tying/bundling, margin squeeze, and refusal to supply), specific tests have been defined, the fulfilment of which gives rise to a presumption that the conduct is capable of restricting competition; and (3) other conduct still requires a full, effects-based assessment. The role of the as-efficient-competitor test (the AEC test) is significantly diminished: it is no longer mandatory outside margin-squeeze cases, but rather one possible factor among others. In addition, the Guidelines confirm a "soft safe harbour": a market share below 40% does not, in itself, remove the possibility of an investigation, but it does reduce its likelihood.

Käytännön huomio

The Guidelines are not legally binding on the courts and do not alter the wording of Article 102 TFEU or section 7 of the Competition Act itself — they primarily steer the Commission's own enforcement priorities. The diminished role of the AEC test in the Guidelines nevertheless does not remove the relevance of the Intel case law (see above), since the EU courts may still require an AEC assessment where an undertaking specifically disputes the anticompetitive nature of its conduct with substantiated arguments.

Epäselvä oikeustila

The case law following the Intel case has not yet fully settled the extent to which the AEC test is mandatory across all types of rebate scheme, as opposed to only where an undertaking specifically disputes the anticompetitive nature of its scheme with substantiated arguments. A case-by-case assessment therefore remains essential.

See Also

• Dominant Market Position
• Relevant Markets
• Fines in Competition Law
• Key Precedents

Sources

Lainsäädäntö ja lähteet tarkistettu 6.9.2026.