Comments from interested parties on commitments offered by four international publishers - Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp., USA), Harper Collins (News Corp., USA), Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing, France), Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (owner of inter alia Macmillan, Germany) – and Apple, are requested by the Commission on the sale of e-books.

The European Commission is doing a market test on the commitments offered by four international publishers - Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp., USA), Harper Collins (News Corp., USA), Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing, France), Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (owner of inter alia Macmillan, Germany) – and Apple, commitments whose aim is to alleviate concerns that these companies may have engaged in an anti-competitive concerted practice affecting the sale of e-books in the European Economic Area (EEA). The Commission initiated the investigation in December 2011.

These companies may have breached EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive practices by jointly switching the sale of e-books from a wholesale model to agency contracts containing the same key terms (in particular an unusual so-called "Most Favoured Nation" – MFN – clause for retail prices), according to the Commission.

On their hand, the five companies offer in the proposed commitments to terminate existing agency agreements and refrain from adopting price MFN clauses for five years. In case any of the four publishers would enter into new agency agreements, retailers would be free to set the retail price of e-books during a two-year period, provided the aggregate value of price discounts granted by retailers does not exceed the total annual amount of the commissions that the retailer receives from the publisher. Now, interested parties can submit comments with regard to the proposed commitments within one month from the date of publication.