Technical and Competition Committees update – Newsletter September 2020

30/09/2020

The Technical and Competition Committees held a virtual meeting on 16^th September, during which members were updated on the latest developments concerning the open cases and agreed on a series of next steps to ensure swift progress.

The meeting was also the opportunity for the Technical Committee to elect a new Chair, following the announcement by Helga Laporte that she would step down from her role at the end of August. The Technical Committee unanimously welcomed the candidacy of Nigel R Bottom, Group Managing Director at the Witham Group and member of the United Kingdom Lubricants Association (UKLA), whose application was formally approved the next day by the UEIL Board. We would all like to thank Helga for her outstanding work at the head of the Committee and are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration with the new Chair.

On the advocacy front, following UEIL’s response to a survey carried out by Ernst & Young as part of the evaluation of the Motor Vehicle Block Exemption Regulation, members are now awaiting the opening of a second consultation to be launched by the European Commission towards the end of the year. DG Competition recently confirmed that its evaluation report will be issued in 2021 and that it would mark the end of the retrospective evaluation of the current regime. The second phase of the process, namely assessing options for the future and choosing between them, will then begin.

The next meeting of the Technical and Competition Committees will take place on 27January 2021.