European consumer group Euroconsumers along with Football Supporters Europe have filed a complaint with the European Commission accusing FIFA of abusing its monopoly over World Cup ticket sales to impose excessive prices and unfair conditions on fans. The complaint, obtained by POLITICO, alleges breaches of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits abuses of a dominant market position. “FIFA has a complete monopoly over World Cup ticket sales,” said Romane Armangau, a spokesperson for Euroconsumers. “They are using that power to charge prices that would not exist in a normal competitive market, while hiding information from buyers and manipulating them into rushed decisions.” The groups point to a range of alleged abusive practices, including limited transparency on ticket categories and seat allocation, a “variable pricing” system that can push prices higher over time, and the actual scarcity of tickets advertised from $60. “When you buy that ticket, you don’t actually know what you’re buying,” Armangau said. “It means attending the 2026 World Cup has become financially out of reach for most ordinary supporters,” she added, pointing to tickets to the final that now start at more than $4,000. Fans can also face additional costs, including resale fees of around 15 percent, according to the complaint. The groups further accuse FIFA of using “dark patterns” — design and marketing tactics that create artificial urgency — to pressure fans into buying tickets. The filing lands as pressure on FIFA is already building in Brussels. In an interview with POLITICO earlier this month, EU Sports Commissioner Glenn Micallef warned of the safety risks for fans travelling to the 2026 World Cup, citing concerns linked to the war in Iran. He said FIFA had yet to provide renewed assurances for supporters, stressing that “since one of the hosts of this biggest sporting event in the world is party to a war, it’s only legitimate that assurances are given.” Micallef also criticized FIFA’s partnership with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” a body widely seen in Europe as an attempt to sidestep the United Nations. The complaint to the EU leans on a December 2023 Super League court ruling, which said FIFA and UEFA can fall under EU competition law when they organize and market competitions as economic activities. The filing argues that reasoning applies here too, because FIFA is the sole seller of World Cup tickets and is allegedly abusing that dominant position. While Brussels has previously scrutinized sports governing bodies, targeting FIFA’s ticketing and pricing practices would open a new front. Euroconsumers and its partners are urging the European Commission to intervene, including by imposing price caps and forcing greater transparency over ticket sales. “We are asking the Commission to act immediately with interim measures,” Armangau said. “Once those matches are played, the harm to fans cannot be undone.”

The German competition authority hit Amazon with a €59 million fine on Thursday after finding the e-commerce giant’s pricing rules for third-party vendors to be in breach of national and EU competition rules. The authority determined that Amazon’s practices, and in particular its use of algorithms to influence pricing by sellers and the enforcement of its Fair Pricing Policy, are in breach of Germany’s digital dominance rules as well as EU competition law. “Amazon competes directly with marketplace sellers on its platform and influences the prices of its competitors, including through price caps, which is problematic from a competition standpoint,” Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, said in a statement. The agency takes issue with Amazon’s pricing restrictions, and in particular its pricing cap, on what third-party sellers can charge without being penalized under the platform’s rules. “We will vigorously challenge the FCO’s conclusion, which is based on unique German regulation and directly conflicts with EU competition law consumer standards,” said Rocco Bräuniger, Amazon’s country manager for Germany, in a statement. Per Bräuniger, the agency is forcing Amazon to promote uncompetitive prices to customers. The decision follows a preliminary assessment sent to Amazon in June 2025, after which the company submitted comments. The Bundeskartellamt had designated Amazon as a company of paramount significance for competition across markets in July 2022, a finding upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in April 2024. 

BRUSSELS — The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into whether Google breached EU competition rules by using the content of web publishers, as well as video uploaded to YouTube, for artificial intelligence purposes. The investigation will examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thus placing rival AI models at a disadvantage, the Commission said on Tuesday. In a statement, the EU executive said it was concerned that Google may have used the content of web publishers to provide generative AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers, and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content. Further, it said that the U.S. search giant may have used video and other content uploaded on YouTube to train Google’s generative AI models without compensating creators and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content. The formal antitrust probe follows Google’s rollout of AI-driven search results, which resulted in a drop in traffic to online news sites. Google was fined nearly €3 billion in September for abusing its dominance in online advertising. It has proposed technical remedies over that penalty, but resisted a call by EU competition chief Teresa Ribera to break itself up.

BRUSSELS — A bid to revive a European football Super League is unlikely to find a sympathetic audience in Brussels despite the court victory the breakaway contest scored last week. A Spanish appeals court called foul on European football’s organizing body, ruling that UEFA had illegally stifled an attempt by a dozen top clubs from Spain, Italy and England to form their own contest. The EU “will continue to advocate for the strengthening of our sport model, our national leagues and grassroot sport,” Glenn Micallef, commissioner for culture and sport, said in a statement to POLITICO reacting to the judgment.  The Maltese commissioner said the EU executive would continue to work with UEFA and LaLiga — the European and Spanish federations found by the Madrid court to have breached EU competition law — in order to ensure that money is redistributed from the top clubs to amateur leagues. In June, the Spanish competition authority opened an antitrust investigation into UEFA’s conduct, a case which observers — including a former advocate general — think should be taken up by the European Commission. “[The Super League] contradicts the principles of the European Sports Model and collapsed in 2021 because it was a bad idea from the start,” said Micallef, noting that it was rejected by fans, players and governments across Europe at the time. The commissioner’s comment follows the European Parliament’s adoption of a resolution in October that stated the legislative body’s opposition to “breakaway competitions.” Both Real Madrid and A22 Sports Management have said that they will seek damages from UEFA following the court ruling. Both Real Madrid and A22 Sports Management have said that they will seek damages from UEFA following the court ruling. | Sven Hoppe/Getty Images Despite the Super League’s collapse in 2021, its backers have continued to try to organize a breakaway competition.  In response to last Wednesday’s judgment, A22 said that it had held extensive discussions with UEFA officials aimed at creating an open, cross-border football competition, but that the Switzerland-based federation “refused to pursue a compromise.” “UEFA is clearly legally obliged to recognise A22’s right to organize competitions on an equal footing with their own,” the firm said in a statement. UEFA has said that it will carefully review the judgment before deciding on further steps.

The European Commission has opened a door marked danger. In July it issued a guidance letter blessing the creation of what is known as an Automotive Licensing Negotiation Group (Auto LNG). In doing so, it gave the green light to rival carmakers to form a cartel-like entity to negotiate licenses for patents that underpin standardized technologies (standards essential patents, or SEPs).   > SEPs are vital in many industries because they enable devices and services to interoperate seamlessly across different manufacturers, platforms and geographies. They cover technologies such as Wi-Fi, 5G and video coding, and are integral to the Internet of Things.   > SEPs are vital in many industries because they enable devices and services to > interoperate seamlessly across different manufacturers, platforms and > geographies. For decades, EU competition law treated the collective bargaining among competitors that LNGs of any kind represent as off-limits. The timing of the change was not incidental.   In September the Commission also released draft revisions of its Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Technology Transfer Guidelines (TTG). Together, these texts shape how Europe manages its innovation economy, including its SEP licensing market.  A success story at stake  On the positive side, the drafts reaffirm the importance of transparent patent pools. Such pools bring together complementary SEPs owned by multiple parties and make them available through a single license. Pools cut transaction costs, create efficiencies and provide clarity to technology implementers.    SEP owners who contribute technology to a standard promise to license their patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Pools put that commitment into practice by offering a single license that the market can accept or reject.   The draft TTG strengthens requirements for transparency and governance in pools by emphasizing the importance of essentiality checks, published terms, open participation and safeguards against collusion. These measures codify practices many pools already follow. In doing so, the Commission is rightly cementing transparent pools’ role as trusted intermediaries in SEP licensing.  LNGs and FRAND cannot co-exist  Properly structured pools only succeed if implementers view their terms as balanced; they cannot ‘enforce’ acceptance into existence. When the market pushes back, pools adjust. That responsiveness makes them both pro-competitive and self-correcting.   LNGs invert that logic. As coalitions of buyers, their explicit objective is to aggregate purchasing power to secure discounts from the prevailing FRAND rate — all while their members continue to use the technology. However, the non-discrimination limb of FRAND makes across the board ‘group discounts’ very hard to square with commitments owed to all implementers, including those that have already taken licenses, directly or through a pool. This distorts competition by enabling buyers to exert undue pressure on licensors.  The draft TTG seeks to allay concerns by requiring LNG participation to be open and internally non-discriminatory, yet it does not grapple with the external effect on the SEP holder’s non-discrimination duty. That omission risks forcing a de facto “LNG rate” onto the whole market.   Asymmetry and holdout risk  The asymmetry here is striking. If price talks fail for tangible inputs, suppliers can simply stop shipments. Not so with SEPs: once standardized, the technology is embedded and keeps being used unless long, costly litigation is pursued. This reality gives coordinated buyers leverage to delay or avoid paying – a textbook recipe for holdout and cartel-like behavior.  Some argue that if licensors can license jointly through pools, licensees should be able to do so in LNGs. This is false logic. Pools aggregate non-competing assets to make complementary patents accessible. LNGs aggregate competing buyers to dictate price, a monopsony dynamic that competition law has long treated with suspicion. Pools, by contrast, have no such power. They live or die by market acceptance. Their incentive is to align with existing demand.  Process shortcuts, shaky justifications  Equally troubling is how the Commission chose to act. The July letter was issued under an ‘informal guidance’ procedure, an opaque tool usually used to clarify cutting-edge cases. SEP holders and smaller innovators were not consulted, despite being directly affected.  The substantive justification is no better. Both the Commission and Germany’s Bundeskartellamt, which had previously authorized the ALNG in June 2024, leaned on a market-share threshold, finding automakers represent less than 15 percent of the ‘general mobile communications’ market.   However, connected cars represent a completely separate vertical, with distinct technical features like vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and the market threshold should apply to it specifically. Furthermore, in licensing markets, a coordinated 15 percent holdout can freeze dealmaking across the board. That risk is ignored.  > Connected cars represent a completely separate vertical, with distinct > technical features. Meanwhile, the invocation of decarbonization as a reason to tolerate cartel-like structures conflates policy domains. Climate objectives, however worthy, cannot excuse weakening competition law guardrails.  Keep the back door closed  Pools already deliver the benefits LNGs claim — lower transaction costs, broader access, transparent terms, market efficiencies — without cartel risks. Most importantly, the FRAND framework, tested in courts and practice, continues to support rapid technology rollouts across the EU and is fully compatible with pools. It is utterly incompatible with LNGs. To adhere to FRAND principles that are the cornerstone of SEP licensing worldwide, LNGs cannot exist.  > Pools already deliver the benefits LNGs claim — lower transaction costs, > broader access, transparent terms, market efficiencies — without cartel risks. If the Commission wants to modernize SEP policy, it should do so openly and only when market failures are identified. This involves consultation to establish clear criteria and evidence of consumer benefit. By contrast, its current approach threatens to disrupt efficient markets, squeeze royalties that fund research and development, and slow Europe’s pace of innovation.  In reinforcing transparent pools, the Commission got one big thing right with its draft TTG. It should not squander that by blessing LNGs.  Roberto Dini has more than 40 years’ experience in patent licensing and is recognized as one of the global market’s most respected experts.    For a detailed analysis of the legal, economic and procedural defects in the Auto LNG approach — and a fuller comparison between pools and LNGs — see: Auto Licensing Negotiation Groups are a Bad, Anticompetitive Idea.   

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music From a picturesque mountain resort in Austria, at the European Forum Alpbach, host Sarah Wheaton unpacks fresh threats by the U.S. to hit countries with tariffs over their digital rules — drawing instant reactions from the European Commission’s Sabine Weyand and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. She then sits down with former Spanish Foreign Minister — now dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po — Arancha González Laya, to ask how Europe can move from “limping along” to setting the pace on trade, tech and alliances.

Canada will rescind a planned digital services tax in order to advance stalled trade talks with the U.S., Ottawa announced on Sunday.  The tax on the revenues produced by Canadian online users, which was due to go into effect on Monday, angered Donald Trump, with the American president calling it “a direct and blatant attack” on the U.S. Trump terminated trade talks with Canada on Friday, blaming the “egregious” tax. Referring to Canada, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday: “They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also.” After his government folded on the tax, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Trump administration agreed to resume trade talks, aiming to reach a deal by July 21, according to Canada’s Department of Finance.  Trump has repeatedly railed against “non-tariff barriers” imposed by other countries — particularly regulations and taxes on the tech industry.  Britain’s digital services tax caught Trump’s attention, though Britain’s trade secretary told POLITICO last week that reducing it is not part of ongoing U.S.-U.K. trade talks. POLITICO and other outlets reported last week that Europe has indicated it’s willing to be flexible on the Digital Markets Act to clinch a trade deal with Washington. But in comments published Monday, EU competition chief Teresa Ribera pushed back.  “We will not compromise … around sovereignty and around regulation on how to work in our own market,” Ribera told The Capitol Forum, per excerpts from an interview seen by POLITICO. With a July 9 deadline looming — and U.S. tariffs set to kick in — major EU players are split over whether to rush a deal or hold firm to secure better terms.