Sustainability and Competition Law in Austria

Sustainability and environmental protection are the pressing questions of our time. Austrian competition law keeps pace with these issues and addresses them under the light of both antitrust and unfair competition law. Suitably, the amendment of the Austrian Cartel Act in 2021 took account of environmentally sustainable and carbon-neutral economies within its exemption provision, which led to a remarkable novelty in antitrust law. Beyond that, Austrian case law delt with environmental advertising in the light of unfair competition law and established a strict standard for the assessment of advertisements containing catchwords such as "organic" or "climate neutral".