Discriminatory Leveraging Plus: The Standard for Independent Self-Preferencing Abuses after Google Shopping (C-48/22 P)

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2025 10(1), 25-44 | Article | (Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2025 10(1), 25-44 | Article | (Table of Contents) 1. Introduction and background – 2. Dispensability of the indispensability criterion for independent discriminatory leveraging abuses – 3. Standard of the discriminatory leveraging abuse: what is the plus? – 4. The what-if dilemma: causation and the burden of proof – 5. The never-ending tale of the as-efficient-competitor-test – 6. Conclusion. | (Abstract) Almost fourteen years after the European Commission (EC) opened proceedings against Google for abusive behaviour, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled, confirming in its findings the EC decision of 2017 and siding with the 2021 decision of the General Court (GC) as well as the Advocate General opinion. In its Google Shopping judgment, the ECJ paved the way for an independent self-preferencing abuse and outlined the necessary prerequisites for such a type of abuse, which are generally transferrable to other situations. Discrimination – self-favouring and demotion of competitors – plus potentially anticompetitive or exclusionary effects seen in light of all the specific circumstances and accompanying practices constitutes an own form of abuse. Bronner is not applicable. The Court further emphasised the burden of proof for infringements on the Commission but applied a workable standard of proof that allowed the Commission to discharge its burden of proof without applying a full counterfactual analysis. It also clarified the applicability of the AEC-test.