GDPR Compliance in Antitrust Leniency Applications (Webinar)

On 22 April, Competition partner Anne Federle and Data Protection & IP/IT partner Benoit Van Asbroeck from our Brussels office jointly held a webinar exploring data protection requirements in connection with antitrust leniency applications (voluntary self-reporting to exclude/limit the risk of antitrust fines).

The webinar was organised in cooperation with OneTrust DataGuidance, an online platform monitoring international data protection developments across 300 jurisdictions.

The presentation was structured around a hypothetical case, which started with an employee calling the company's ethics hotline and reporting that several colleagues seem to be involved in a price cartel.

Our Bird & Bird experts took the participants through the different stages of an internal cartel investigation and the process for a leniency application and discussed how to reconcile, at each stage, the competing demands of an antitrust investigation (requiring in particular speed and strict confidentiality) and of data protection law, and how to limit the resulting risks for companies. This also included questions regarding the involvement of external forensic IT service providers for the electronic document review and the transfer of documents to the US.

The recording is available here. You can also read a summary of the key takeaways here.