The Serbian competition watchdog seems to be on a roll these days. Over the past weeks, the Commission for Protection of Competition (the “Commission”) has launched several proceedings for alleged breaches of competition – from three gun jumping cases, through two resale price maintenance cases, all the way to theabuse of dominant position caseagainst the online delivery platform Glovo, as the cherry on top.

Before we delve deeper into the allegations of the Glovo case, let us go back to the roots of this investigation. In 2021, the Commission initiated a market study into the sector of online food delivery platforms to assess competition conditions in this market. The results of the market study and a complaint against Glovo led to a dawn raid at Glovo’s premises and finally the official investigation against this platform. However, chances are that the Commission has been interested in Glovo long before the market study and the dawn raid even happened. Why so? We cannot know for sure, but the Commission might still have hard feelings about Glovo’s acquisition of Serbia’s homegrown platform Donesi slipping under its radar due to their below- benchmark turnovers caused by Covid-19 pandemic.

In itsDecision of November 2, 2022,the Commission raised several concerns about Glovo’s business practices and market conduct, setting the timeframe of the suspected abuse from the establishment of Glovo in June 2019. Most notably, the Serbian watchdog alleged that Glovo had used its dominant position to strong hand restaurant and other partners present on its platform via provisions aimed at retaining partners and disincentivizing them from joining/staying on competing platforms.

The main issue put forward by the Serbian watchdog is Glovo’s arrangements causing its business partners to only work with Glovo and pull out of any other competing online platforms. According to the Commission, such conduct may be detrimental to both consumers and Glovo’s business partners. While consumers may be faced with an undersized selection of restaurants on other platforms which results in a less competitive market and possibly higher prices, Glovo’s business partners must opt between cutting ties with Glovo as the dominant platform and consequentially losing a significant portion of customers or agreeing to Glovo’s restrictive provisions and pulling out from other platforms, again losing customers.

Furthermore, the Commission alleged that Glovo has been applying dissimilar business conditions to equivalent transactions to further influence the decisions of its business partners. Most notably, Glovo had allegedly offered different fees to different partners as an instrument to dissuade them from joining or staying on competing platforms.

It has beenannouncedin July 2022 that the European Commission (the “EC”) carried out a series of unannounced inspections of online food, grocery, and consumer goods delivery businesses in two EU Member States. Reason? Concerns over potential breaches of EU competition laws against forming cartels and other restrictive business practices. Targets? Officially unknown. However, Delivery Hero, majority shareholder of Glovo, and Glovo itself, have confirmed that they were both approached by the EC on the matter. As both companies savour in their statements about meeting all antitrust and compliance requirements and not colluding to share the market for food and grocery delivery services, previous cases in the sector can give us a taste of what lies ahead.

The issue of exclusive provisions between digital platforms and their business partners goes as far as 2015 when the Swedish Competition AuthorityinvestigatedOnlinepizza platform for exclusionary practices against competitors. Further, in 2018 the Hungarian authorityprobedthe owner and manager of Netpincér platform for unfair business practices concerning own delivery services. More recently, the Norwegian authorityinitiated a caseagainst Foodora platform for entering into restrictive agreements. Finally, in 2022 the Spanish competition watchdog, in case against Glovo and others,establishedthe existence of exclusivity clauses but deemed that they were not likely to restrict competition on the relevant market. The above cases have (except for the Spanish one) all ended with the platforms caving and accepting commitments that are aimed at (re)establishing competition on the market.

This raises the question whether Glovo will have to offer commitments in Serbia as well to try to escape fines, or the Commission will decide to set a new path, thus diverging from the established practice of other European authorities.