Draft guidance on Horizontal Agreements

The CMA is consulting on draft guidance on the application of the Chapter I prohibition in the Competition Act 1998 to horizontal agreements. The CMA is seeking responses by 8 March 2023.

The Competition Act 1998 (CA98) prohibits agreements between businesses that restrict competition in the UK (unless they meet the conditions for exemption in section 9(1) of the CA98 or are otherwise excluded). This is known as the Chapter I prohibition. An agreement can be exempt from the Chapter I prohibition if it creates sufficient benefits to outweigh any anti-competitive effects. A ‘block exemption’ exempts whole categories of agreements on the basis that agreements within the category would be likely to be treated as exempt if they were assessed individually. If an agreement meets the conditions set out in a block exemption, it is automatically exempt.

The purpose of the draft guidance under consultation is to explain how the CMA applies the Chapter I prohibition to common types of agreements between actual and potential competitors (referred to as ‘horizontal agreements’).

The guidance also describes the application of the Specialisation Agreements Block Exemption Order 2022 and the Research and Development Block Exemption Order 2022, which came into force on 1 January 2023, and is intended to help businesses assess horizontal agreements to establish whether they fall within the scope of these block exemptions.

In accordance with our policy of openness and transparency, we will publish non-confidential versions of responses on our webpages. If your response contains any information that you regard as sensitive and that you would not wish to be published, please provide at the same time a non-confidential version for publication on our webpages which omits that material and which explains why you regard it as sensitive.

Please email your response to hbersreview@cma.gov.uk. You can also contact us with any queries using this email address.

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