On 30 September 2025, the European Commission announced that it had conducted “unannounced inspections”, dawn raids, on the premises of a company active in the vaccines sector.
The Commission said that it has “concerns that the inspected company may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit abuses of a dominant market position” and, in particular, the Commission is “investigating possible exclusionary practices that may amount to anticompetitive disparagement.”
Executives and legal advisors across all sectors (and not just in pharma) could usefully recall some key lessons from this announcement:
- The Commission is actively engaged in dawn raids. They are real and not just theoretical.
- Dawn raids are not just confined to “cartels” (e.g. price-fixing or market-sharing agreements between businesses) but can also relate to a single company (e.g. a dominant business or the Commission is just inspecting one of the companies in an anticompetitive arrangement).
- The Commission is very interested in “anticompetitive disparagement” (e.g. Case AT.40588 and Case AT.40577) – particularly, where a dominant company “disparages” or seeks to inappropriately damage the reputation of a competitor. This is a relatively new form of “abuse of dominance” which needs to be considered carefully. The “sales pitch” and “messaging” of all businesses (particularly, dominant ones when they are speaking about competitors) should be monitored carefully. Moreover, businesses whose reputation has suffered could invoke “disparagement” against a dominant company without having to engage in expensive and difficult defamation proceedings.
- Companies need to be ready for cross-border/multi-jurisdictional inspections. Typically, General Counsel and executives assume that they will attend the single “dawn raid” in a single building but dawn raids can happen across facilities and across States. The Commission said in its media release that, in this case, the Commission “officials were accompanied by their counterparts from the relevant national competition authorities” which implies that the inspections in this case occurred in more than one Member State. So, companies need to roll-out secure privileged online video communications across the facilities and the various legal teams so that it is possible for the General Counsel to co-ordinate activities across colleagues and geographies.
- As always, companies being inspected can be innocent and have not breached competition law at all. This is just a preliminary stage in the investigation process, but it is critical that this stage is taken seriously, and companies have the right procedures in place before the dawn raid occurs.
The key message is that all firms need to have a dawn raid procedure. This is no different than having procedures in place for health, safety and fire risks. This report contains some practical advice for general counsel on dealing with dawn raids.
For more information on EU and national competition dawn raids and inspections, please contact Dr Vincent Power, Partner or any member of A&L Goodbody's EU, Competition & Procurement team.
Date published: 7 October 2025
