The More Economic Approach To Eu Antitrust Law

In the late 1990s, the European Commission embarked on a long process of introducing a 'more economic approach' to EU Antitrust law. One by one, it reviewed its approach to all three pillars of EU Antitrust Law, starting with Article 101 TFEU, moving on to EU merger control and concluding the process with Article 102 TFEU. Its aim was to make EU antitrust law more compatible with contemporary economic thinking. On the basis of an extensive empirical analysis of the Commission's main enforcement tools, this book establishes the changes that the more economic approach has made to the Commission's enforcement practice over the past fifteen years. It demonstrates that the more economic approach not only introduced modern economic assessment tools to the Commission's analyses, but fundamentally changed the Commission's interpretation of the law. Emulating one of the key credos of the US Antitrust Revolution thirty years earlier, the Commission reinterpreted the EU antitrust rules as aiming at the enhancement of economic consumer welfare only, and amended its understanding of key legal concepts accordingly. This book argues that the Commission's new understanding of the law has many benefits. Its key principles are logical, translate well into workable legal concepts and promise a great degree of accuracy. However, it also has a number of serious drawbacks as it stands. Most worryingly, its revised interpretation of the law is to large extents incompatible with the case law of the European Court of Justice, which has not been swayed by the exclusive consumer welfare aim. This situation is undesirable from the point of view of legal certainty and the rule of law.

Triggers and catalysts -- The process -- The agenda -- A more economic objective -- A more economic concept of harm -- A more economic concept of countervailing effects -- A more economic test -- A more economic methodology -- Advantages -- Compatibility with the case law -- Other concerns

Offering a concise and critical comparison of EU competition law and US antitrust law from an economic perspective, this is the ideal textbook for international and interdisciplinary courses combining law and economic approaches.

This is the first EU competition law treatise that fully integrates economic reasoning in its treatment of the decisional practice of the European Commission and the case-law of the European Court of Justice. Since the European Commission's move to a "more economic approach" to competition law reasoning and decisional practice, the use of economic argument in competition law cases has become a stricter requirement. Many national competition authorities are also increasingly moving away from a legalistic analysis of a firm's conduct to an effect-based analysis of such conduct, indeed most competition cases today involve teams composed of lawyers and industrial organisation economists. Competition law books tend to have either only cursory coverage of economics, have separate sections on economics, or indeed are far too technical in the level of economic understanding they assume. Ensuring a genuinely integrated approach to legal and economic analysis, this major new work is written by a team combining the widely recognised expertise of two competition law practitioners and a prominent economic consultant. The book contains economic reasoning throughout in accessible form, and, more pertinently for practitioners, examines economics in the light of how it is used and put to effect in the courts and decision-making institutions of the EU. A general introductory section sets EU competition law in its historical context. The second chapter goes on to explore the economics foundations of EU competition law. What follows then is an integrated treatment of each of the core substantive areas of EU competition law, including Article 101 TFEU, Article 102 TFEU, mergers, cartels and other horizontal agreements and vertical restraints.

During the last decade the European Commission has progressively adopted what is called a and‘more economic approachand’ toward competition policy. This approach, which draws on U.S. antitrust policy, puts greater emphasis on possible welfare effects of business practices and is less concerned with competitive market structures. Under this school of thought concentration cannot be said to impede effective competition to the extent that efficiency gains outweigh market distortions. In order to stimulate the debate on this basic reorientation, in January 2009 the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law at Hamburg convened economists, legal scholars, and practitioners for an exchange of views on these and‘newand’ methodological foundations of EU competition policy and competition law. Two especially controversial elements were chosen for in-depth discussion: the prohibition of abuses of dominant positions and the review of State aid. This book reproduces fourteen papers from this conference, representing the considered views of prominent European lawyers, economists, academics, policymakers, and enforcement officials in the competition field on matters such as: the objectives of EU competition law; the current enforcement guidelines of the EU Commission regarding Article 102 TFEU and? measuring market power; abusive low pricing strategies; the economics of competition law enforcemennt; recent developments in EU State aid law; economic justifications for State aid. A critical assessment of the Commissionand’s State aid action plan by the German Monopolies Commission is appended in English. Applying law and economics theory to competition law, this book shows that the and‘more economicand’ approach is exerting a considerable impact on various sectors of competition law. The authors clearly demonstrate the progress that can be made when lawyers and economists take notice of and respect the characteristics of each otherand’s discipline. Moreover, the authors show how new insights of economic theory may be integrated into the relevant legal analysis. The book will therefore be appreciated by academics, practitioners, and officials representing both fields.

This edited volume addresses the importance, implications, practices, problems and the role of economic evidence in EU competition law. It includes contributions on the use of the economic approach in the application and enforcement of EU competition law in different EU countries, candidate member states and third countries.

In the US and EU, legal analysis in competition cases is conducted on a case-by-case approach. This approach assesses each particular practice for both its legality and its welfare effects. While this analytic method has the merits of 'getting the result right' by, inter alia, reducing error costs in antitrust adjudication, it comes at a cost of certainty, predictability and clarity in the legal principles which govern antitrust law. This is a rule of law concern. This is the first book to explore this tension between Europe's 'More Economic Approach', the US's Rule of Reason, and the Rule of Law. The tension manifests itself in the assumptions in and choice of analytic method; the institutional agents driving this effects based approach and their competency to use and assess the results of the methodology they demand; and, the nature and stability of the legal principles used in modern effects-based competition analysis. The book forcefully argues that this approach to competition law represents a threat to the rule of law. Competition, Effects and Predictability will be of interest to European and American competition law scholars and practitioners, legal historians, policy makers and members of the judiciary.