Insurers in limbo over EC competition rules

Linda O’Toole of Norton Rose says the EC is keeping insurers guessing over the future of the current exemption to certain competition regulations

It is almost a year since the European Commission (the Commission) launched (on 16 April 2008) a consultation with the European insurance industry on whether to renew the Insurance Block Exemption Regulation (EC) No 358/2003 (BER). The aim of the Commission’s consultation, which closed on 31 July 2008, was to identify clear and substantive reasons to convince the Commission to keep “block exempting” certain industry agreements that might otherwise fall foul of the prohibitions in articles 81 or 82 of the EC Treaty.