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Ireland

EU competition law: first informal guidance on sustainability - Commission comfort letter on joint procurement and charging standards for electric port equipment clarifies safeguards and signals openness to industry-led decarbonisation

Published on: 15 October 2025

Published by a LexisNexis Ireland - Commercial expert

Legal News

Article summary

The European Commission (the Commission) has, for the first time, sent informal guidance letters relying on its updated 2022 Notice on Informal Guidance (the 2022 notice). The letters examine how sustainability principles apply to co-operation arrangements in the transport industry. Beyond being the inaugural letters issued under the previously little-used 2022 notice, the APM comfort letter is also the first occasion on which the Commission has applied the 2023 revised Guidelines on Horizontal Co-operation Agreements (the 2023 guidelines) to a sustainability initiative. Sustainability agreements are described as 'any horizontal co-operation agreement that pursues a sustainability objective, irrespective of the form of the co-operation'. The 2023 guidelines openly permit sustainability agreements that may raise competition issues provided they deliver verifiable efficiency gains, are necessary to secure those efficiencies, confer benefits on consumers, and do not eliminate competition.

Background: Informal Guidance and Sustainability

In 2004, the EU overhauled its competition law enforcement framework and processes, shifting from a centralised notification and authorisation regime for agreements between undertakings to a self-assessment system. Nonetheless, the Commission's 2004 Notice on Informal Guidance (the 2004 guidance) already enabled undertakings to request guidance from the Commission on 'novel or unresolved questions'...

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