In the case of State undertakings, which have been entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interest or have the character of revenue-producing monopolies, competition rules apply insofar as their application does not obstruct the performance in law or in fact, of their particular task or function.<\/p>\n
The courts have interpreted this exception narrowly.\u00a0 The anti-competitive behaviour must be necessary for the performance of public tasks.\u00a0 It is not enough that it facilitates those tasks.<\/p>\n
The defence may be available or where the services of general economic importance may be threatened by competitors who seek to pick profitable elements of the business without bearing the costs of providing for the operation of a general service.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 competition law rules should prevail, except to the extent that the general service is jeopardised.<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dominance Dominance must be considered with reference to the relevant market once ascertained and defined.\u00a0 Dominance has been defined as a position of economic strength enjoyed by an undertaking, which enables it to prevent effective competition from being maintained in the relevant market by affording it the power to behave to an appreciable extent, independently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9978"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20523,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions\/20523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}