Google fined for failing to comply with Competition Board's measures for non-compliance with Competition Board's Measures
The Turkish Competition Board fined Google approx. EUR 8.4 million for placing favouring its own local search and accommodation price comparison more favorably at general search results page. As an extension of this decision, the Turkish Competition over competitors. The Board had also imposed certain measures to facilitate effective competition in the market. Although the Competition Board had previously accepted the remedies submitted by Google, a recent announcement on the Turkish Competition Authority's website revealed, through monitoring activities, solutions that Google did not undertook to implement the remedies, monitoring by the Turkish Competition Authority revealed that the company had not actioned them with respect to hotel queries. On this basis, the Competition searches. The Board has therefore imposed daily administrative fines, which began on 15th April 2024 and will remain until Google demonstrates compliance, corresponding to 0.05% of Google's annual2023 turnover generated in Turkey in 2023. The daily fine started ticking on 15.04.2024 and will continue until Google come into compliance.
French high schools fined
Five well-known French high schools in Istanbul – Saint-Joseph, Saint Benoit, Notre-Dame de Sion, Saint Michel and Saint Pulchérie – have been fined for fixing enrolment enrollment (and other) fees and other price related aspects and, teacher salaries. The total fine for fixing the enrollment fees is approx. respective fines arising from each breach are EUR 366,827 and the fine for colluding on teacher salaries is approx. EUR 244,551.
META's daily administrative fine is over ends
The Turkish Competition Authority announced that the daily administrative fine imposed on META has ended. As a quick re-cap, the Turkish Competition Board previously found that META abused its dominant position by combining use utilising user data from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, hindering its to deleteriously affect social network competitors in social networking and online display advertising markets. META then faced daily fines for after failing to offer solutions that would promote fair competition in the, META was made subject to daily fines.
According to a recent announcement published on the Turkish Competition Authority's website of the Turkish Competition Authority, the initial remedies solutions offered by META were rejected due to the following reasons:
- Directed consent: Remedy Solution offered was designed in a way to direct users to provide their grant consent to data combination use.
- Lack of transparency: The explanation of the data practices was insufficient.
- Unequal options: The opt-out process for data combination was more complex than opting in.
- No guarantee of access: Users were not informed they could still use the apps without data merging. The Turkish Competition Board has now accepted META's revised remedies solutions and lifted ended the daily fines. Total amount of the daily fine issued is stated which amounted to be approx. EUR 15.8 million.
Tofaş's acquisition of Stellantis Turkey operations under extended Phase II review
Turkey car manufacturer Tofaş announced, on the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) that), the start of Phase II of the review of its acquisition of Stellantis's operations in Stellantis Turkey. The proposed acquisition includes the will include distribution rights of Stellantis brands such as Peugeot, Citroën, Opel, and DS Automobiles). .
Turkish Competition Authority aims to increase its activities in the digital market presence
The In a recent interview Mr. Birol Küle, head of the Turkish Competition Authority, Mr. Birol Küle, recently highlighted ahis focus on strengthening regulations for regulation of digital markets, in an interview. Mr. Küle. He noted that many competition authorities have already implemented digital markets regulations such regulation, and that the Turkish Competition Authority is currently analyzing the structure analysing structural and competition within Turkey's digital aspects of these markets. Although certain reforms were proposed to the Amendments to Turkey's competition act, to address digital markets, they have not been debated but not implemented yet thus far.
Alibaba's Trendyol fined for self-preference fine
Turkish e-commerce giant Trendyol was slapped with a EUR 1.7 million fine by the Turkish Competition Board for favoring its own private label products over those of other sellers on its platform. The investigation found that Trendyol was not discriminating against individual sellers, but rather abusing its dominant position through self-preferencing. This included (i) manipulating algorithms to give grant Trendyol's private label products an unfair advantage in search results and promotions, and; (ii) using seller data gathered through the platform to benefit Trendyol's own products.
To prevent future self-preferencing, the Competition Board ordered Trendyol to:
- Refrain from any manipulation to favor actions that would favour Trendyol's private label products,
- Completely separate data for its private label business data from its seller data,. This includes including:
- Creating different teams for separating its private label products team..
- Prohibiting data sharing between private label teams and seller data teams.
- Implementing a clear internal policy on data usage.
- Store product rating and brand filtering algorithms for three3 years to ensure transparency.
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