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Red Bull Challenges EU Commission Over Lengthy Antitrust Inspection

By  |  May 19, 2025

The European Commission’s recent inspection of Red Bull’s premises is under legal scrutiny, as the energy drink giant contests the authority’s conduct during the investigation. According to a statement filed with the EU’s General Court (GC), Red Bull argues that the Commission’s raid, conducted in March 2023, was not sufficiently justified by concrete suspicions of anticompetitive behavior and was influenced heavily by information filtered through the lens of a rival company, Monster Energy.

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    Per a statement from Red Bull, the company sought compensation from the Commission for the extensive duration and scope of the inspection, claiming that the regulatory body seized an excessive amount of company data during the process. When the Commission declined to reimburse these additional costs, Red Bull escalated the dispute to the GC, formally filing the action on December 30, 2024, a move recently made public in the Official Journal of the European Union.

    The complaint submitted by Red Bull is anchored on four core grievances: the Commission’s refusal to cover extra expenses caused by what it deems a disproportionately long and invasive inspection; a lack of clear reasoning behind the decision on cost reimbursement and ambiguity about alternative approaches; an erroneous legal interpretation based on misapplication of the Nexans case law; and a violation of Red Bull’s fundamental defense rights.

    This is not an isolated incident in the EU’s enforcement landscape. According to a statement regarding past precedents, the French company Nexans also contested the Commission’s approach in 2009, leading the GC to partially annul the Commission’s justification for a dawn raid due to insufficient detail on the inspected product. The European Court of Justice upheld this decision in 2014 but affirmed the Commission’s broad discretion in how it conducts inspections, particularly regarding how much information must be disclosed.

    Moreover, Red Bull is among a growing number of companies expressing dissatisfaction with the Commission’s dawn raid procedures. Per a statement from recent developments, Michelin filed a request with the GC just last month to annul a separate dawn raid carried out the previous year, seeking the return of all confiscated materials.

    Source: Global Competition Review