Chambers Europe – Competition Law Research Review

The biggest news from the competition law research for the Chambers 2026 Europe guide was our return to carrying out full research in Ukraine after a number of years of having this as a spotlight table and not conducting calls for the jurisdiction.  However, following demand from the firms, we did accept referees for the Europe 2026 research and ended up doing over 40 calls, which gave us enough information to justify bringing back bands for both the firms and individuals in Ukraine.

The other change we have made, in collaboration with the research into Public Law in Italy is to create a separate table for Foreign Investment in Italy and the Golden Power rule.  Foreign Direct Investment has been a talking point throughout our research in many jurisdictions and so we will continue to look at whether there is a need for separate Foreign Investment tables in other jurisdictions over the coming years.

Even discounting the additional referees in Ukraine, there was notable growth in involvement in the competition law sections covered in the Europe guide compared to the 2025 edition.  We saw a five percent rise in the number of submissions we received compared to 2025 research, with an average of 27 submissions per jurisdiction – though this is somewhat skewed by Belgium where we received over 120 submissions!

We also saw a very impressive 23% rise in the number of calls we carried out – not counting the ones for Ukraine.  Belgium remained the most responsive jurisdiction, with over 170 calls carried out, but mention should also be made for the Netherlands as the other jurisdiction to break the 100 call barrier, while Spain narrowly missed out on becoming the third member of this exclusive club with 96 calls carried out.

On top of this rise in the number of calls undertaken, we also received over 4,000 survey responses from referees, enabling us to have a very detailed picture of the competition law market across Europe.

With Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Switzerland all set to join Belgium in accepting 30 referees for the Europe 2027 guide, we can expect to see another rise in the number of responses received for the next research cycle too.

As a result of the increased number of submissions and calls, we saw a five percent rise in the number of firms we rank and a seven percent increase in the number of individual lawyers we rank.  There was an exact fifty-fifty split between male and female lawyers among the newly ranked individuals.

In a practice area as varied as competition law, choosing a single highlight matter will always be a challenge, but looking at this from a pan-European perspective, there was clearly one matter that was guaranteed to appear on submissions in every jurisdiction.  So, for its ubiquity across the continent, the Trucks cartel follow-on damages action has to be the standout matter of the year.

There were a few candidates for trend of the year.  Investigations into the technology sector came up regularly, as, of course, did follow-on damages actions and Foreign Direct Investment.  The overlap between competition law and employment, particularly around investigations into no-poach agreements was another common theme.  But these have all been trends in the market for the last couple of years.  The most notable new trend seems to be the rise in competition authorities asking for the power to call in below-threshold mergers or, in some cases, using abuse of dominance to investigate completed mergers following the Towercast precedent.

Following a busy year of research for the 2026 guide, we have already begun hearing about growing enforcement practices from competition authorities in a number of European jurisdictions, with several firms already telling us that they are building up their teams in response, so we are looking forward to another exciting year researching competition law for the 2027 guide.