Government & open data
Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM)
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) is the Dutch regulator for competition, consumer protection and several regulated sectors, including energy, telecoms, post and transport. Acm.nl carries the material ACM works with: decisions in individual cases, method and tariff decisions for network operators, market studies, court rulings in ACM cases and guidance for businesses. For anyone working in competition, consumer, procurement or financial law, this is where the regulator's enforcement picture becomes visible, alongside the legislation itself.
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What this source does not give you
An ACM decision is not legislation, and an ACM guideline is not a decision: a guideline is the regulator's own reading of existing rules and the basis on which it intends to enforce, not an independent legal norm. Decisions are also published in anonymised and sometimes redacted form, and a decision still before the courts may be overturned on appeal — so the statutory text, the actual judgment and the decision each have to be checked separately.
Legal domains for which LEO consults this source
Dutch legal domains; each link opens the domain page on leo.prudai.com.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between an ACM decision and an ACM guideline?
- A decision is an act in a concrete case: a fine, an order subject to a penalty payment, a merger clearance or a tariff decision for a network operator. It is addressed to a named party and binds that party, with objection and appeal as the route against it. A guideline is public guidance: ACM explains how it reads existing legislation and where it intends to enforce. The Guideline on Sustainability Claims is one example. A guideline creates no new obligation — the obligation sits in the legislation — but it does indicate where the regulator will look. The two should not be conflated in advice to a client.
- Are ACM's fining decisions published in full online?
- ACM publishes its sanction decisions on acm.nl, but in edited form. Commercially confidential information and personal data are removed, and publication is sometimes suspended while a case is still before the courts. What you read is therefore the public decision, not the complete file. For the underlying material — investigation documents, correspondence — a request under the Dutch Open Government Act is the route; ACM publishes the documents released in response to such requests separately.
- Which areas of law does this source touch in practice?
- Competition and consumer law are the core, but in practice ACM also touches procurement law and financial regulation. Sector regulation makes up a large share of the output: method and revenue decisions for gas and electricity network operators, supervision of heat suppliers, telecoms and postal tariffs. Anyone working in the energy sector will find material there that exists in that form nowhere else.
- How current is ACM's published material?
- The publication stream runs daily; when checked in September 2026 the newest decisions and briefings from that same week were online. That does not mean every document stays current: a guideline can remain published for years and have been revised in the meantime, as with the 2021 Guideline on Sustainability Claims, updated in 2023. So always check both the publication date and the revision date on the document itself.