Rethinking the EU’s by Object Approach to Vertical Restrictions

The EU is in the process of revising its Vertical Block Exemption Regulation and Vertical Guidelines, which expire in 2022. As part of this process, the European Commission has carried out an evaluation identifying a number of issues with how the current rules have functioned since their adoption in 2010, primarily due to the significant changes wrought to distribution markets by the growth of e-commerce. But it has concluded that the list of hardcore restrictions contained in the rules – thos