thank you very much for your e-mail of 30 March 2004, and the attached letters to Prof. Anton Eliassen, chairman of the Council of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). You state in the above-mentioned correspondence that the National Meteorological Services (NMS) and the ECMWF abuse their dominant positions. You also mention that the NMS cooperate under the ECOMET agreement which was notified to the European Commission and received a comfort letter in 1999. You asked us for guidance as regards a possible complain on competition law grounds against the NMS and/or the ECMWF.

You rightly point out in your letter that the handling of complaints will change as a result of the entry into force, on May 1, 2004, of EC Regulation 1/2003 "on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty" and of the EC Regulation "relating to the conduct of proceedings by the Commission pursuant to Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty" (the Proceedings Regulation) and of a number of interpretative Commission notices (the respective texts of the new regulations and notices are available on the European Commission's web site at http://europe.eu.int/comm/competitin/antitrust/legislation/). Under the new system, national competition authorities (NCAs) and national courts will have the full power to apply Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty. A complaint alleging the abuse of a dominant position under Article 82 EC may thus be lodged either with the NCAs or the European Commission or a lawsuit may be brought before national courts. Complaints exclusively relating to the violation of national competition laws will continue to be handled by the NCAs. At this stage, we do not have sufficient information to assess whether the abuse alleged in your letter would fall under Article 82 EC and/or the respective national competition provisions.

The substantive test for a finding of an infringement of Article 82 EC is as follows: (1) one or more undertakings must have a dominant position within the common market or in a substantial part of it (according to case law, there is a presumption of dominance where an undertaking has a market share of 50% or more), (2) the undertaking(s) abuse(s) such a dominant position (e.g., by charging unfair prices, limiting production or discrimination) and (3) the abuse has an effect on trade between Member States.

Assuming, on a hypothetical basis, that Article 82 EC would be applicable in your case, you will first need to determine whether to lodge your complaint with the European Commission or the respective NCA(s) or whether to bring a lawsuit before a national court. The European Commission has recently issued a "notice on cooperation within the Network of Competition authorities" which provides guidance as regards the question which competition authority is "well placed" to handle a complaint (see in particular paras. 5 to 15). According to this notice, a single NCA is, for example, well placed to deal with agreements and practices that substantially affect competition mainly within its territory. Under certain circumstances, parallel action by two or three NCAs may be appropriate. Conversely, the Commission is well placed if one or several agreement(s) or practice(s) have effects on competition in more than three Member States or if Community interest requires the adoption of a Community decision. The new Commission "notice on the handling of complaints by the Commission under Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty" (the Complaints Notice) gives indications about the choice between complaining to the Commission or bringing a lawsuit before a national court (see in particular paras. 12 to 18).

As regards the procedure for complaints lodged with the European Commission, we may refer to the Proceedings Regulation (Articles 5 to 9) and, in particular, to the Complaints Notice which sets out the procedural steps to be taken. In essence, complainants must, as of 1 May, 2004, fill out the so-called Form C (attached as Annex to the Proceedings Regulation and the Complaints Notice) and supply certain specific information about the complaint. The complainant must, for example, provide information on the parties involved, set out in detail the facts relating to the alleged infringement of Article 81 or 82 EC including a description of practices or agreements in question, indicate the nature of the products involved, explain what finding or action the complainant is seeking, an set out grounds on which legitimate interest is claimed by stating how the conduct complained of affects the complainant and explaining how the Commission may remedy the alleged grievance.

We hope that this information is useful. If you should have further inquiries, Philip Kienapfel (telephone: 0032-2-298.80.74) is available to assist you.