For nearly twenty years, EU antitrust enforcement has been governed by Regulation 1/2003, which ushered in a sweeping reform of the procedures for the application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU. This systematic article-by-article expert commentary on the Regulation, with additional perspectives and critical views by particularly experienced and qualified authors, provides an in-depth examination of the Regulation’s legal achievements, implications, and promise for the future. Analysis of each of the Regulation’s articles covers such aspects as: legislative history; rationale and context; practice of the Commission and, where relevant, of the national competition authorities; case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union; international aspects; and outstanding and problematic issues. Along with many of the article commentaries, ‘boxes’ have been added on specific issues of particular salience. The critical reflections of the book’s second part include perspectives from members and staff of the Court of Justice of the European Union and of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition and Legal Service, heads of national competition authorities and of national courts, counsel, economists, consumer organisations, and academics. There are also comparisons with various aspects of antitrust enforcement in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. With this unparalleled book, practitioners and in-house counsel, as well as case-handlers and policymakers, will approach any competition case before the Commission with full awareness of the applicable procedural rules. They will gain a clear understanding of the enforcer’s powers and duties, as well as of the various options available to the undertakings involved in antitrust proceedings and their rights.

This book is the first to empirically study the role of non-competition interests in Article 101 TFEU enforcement.

In the last few years, the public enforcement of Articles 81 and 82 EC has been thoroughly transformed: the competition authorities of the EU Member States have become active enforcers within the European Competition Network, the European Commission has imposed more and higher fines than ever before, leniency has become a major instrument of cartel detection, and some Member States have introduced criminal penalties. The overall trend towards more and stronger enforcement of Articles 81 and 82 EC has also rekindled discussion on the old question of how to strike the right balance between efficient enforcement and adequate protection of the rights of the defence. This book brings together six essays which analyse from both a legal and an economic perspective the powers of investigation of the European Commission and the competition authorities of the Member States, and the corresponding procedural rights and guarantees, the use of settlements, the theory and practice of fines and of leniency, and the criminalization of European antitrust enforcement.

Under the purely economics-based approach to competition law, the central consideration is whether the conduct of undertakings has the effect of restricting competition or not. Such an ‘objective’ approach to antitrust enforcement leaves little room for subjective elements like intentions. But what happens when economic analysis reaches its limits? In this signal contribution, the author invokes the criminal law concept of mens rea, the idea of the ‘guilty mind’, thoroughly evaluating the normative cogency of mens rea evidence in the determination of antitrust infringements. Delving deep into the case law, the author views the subject from the standpoint of a confluence of various areas of law, including: the role of mens rea in the criminal law in France, Germany, and England and Wales; the different types of mens rea (e.g., intent, recklessness, negligence); mens rea in a corporate context; mens rea evidence in United States antitrust law; the notion of the ‘meeting of minds’ in Article 101 TFEU; relevance of intentions in the determination of the object of an agreement or concerted practice; relevance of intentions in the determination of abuse of a dominant position; and the role of mens rea in the determination of fines for antitrust breaches. The author also examines arguments both for and against the use of mens rea evidence in determining whether an antitrust infringement took place and how it should be punished. This is the first full-length assessment of what role mens rea evidence actually plays and should play in competition law even as the tools for antitrust analysis are meant to become increasingly objective. As a thoroughly researched and systematically presented commentary and analysis of the current status of the use of mens rea in antitrust enforcement and how the practice could develop, it is sure to be welcomed by practitioners as well as by policymakers and academics.

This volume (1) defines the specific-anticompetitive-intent, lessening-competition, distorting-competition, and exploitative-abuse tests of illegality promulgated by U.S. and/or E.U. antitrust law, (2) compares the efficiency defenses promulgated by U.S. and E.U. antitrust law, (3) compares the conduct-coverage of the various U.S. and E.U. antitrust laws, (4) defines price competition and quality-or-variety-increasing-investment (QV-investment) competition and explains why they should be analyzed separately, (5) defines the components of individualized-pricing and across-the-board-pricing sellers’ price minus marginal cost gaps and analyses each’s determinants, (6) defines the determinants of the intensity of QV-investment competition and explains how they determine that intensity, (7) demonstrates that definitions of both classical and antitrust markets are inevitably arbitrary, not just at their periphery but comprehensively, (8) criticizes the various protocols for market definition recommended/used by scholars, the U.S. antitrust agencies, the European Commission, and U.S. and E.U. courts, (9) explains that a firm’s economic (market) power or dominance depends on its power over both price and QV investment and demonstrates that, even if markets could be defined non-arbitrarily, a firm’s economic power could not be predicted from its market share, (10) articulates a definition of “oligopolistic conduct” that some economists have implicitly used–conduct whose perpetrator-perceived ex ante profitability depended critically on the perpetrator’s belief that its rivals’ responses would be affected by their belief that it could react to their responses, distinguishes two types of such conduct–contrived and natural–by whether it entails anticompetitive threats and/or offers, explains why this distinction is critical under U.S. but not E.U. antitrust law, analyzes the profitability of each kind of oligopolistic conduct, examines these analyses’ implications for each’s antitrust legality, and criticizes related U.S. and E.U. case-law and doctrine and scholarly positions (e.g., on the evidence that establishes the illegal oligopolistic character of pricing), and (11) executes parallel analyses of predatory conduct--e.g., criticizes various arguments for the inevitable unprofitability of predatory pricing, the various tests that economists/U.S. courts advocate using/use to determine whether pricing is predatory, and two analyses by economists of the conditions under which QV investment and systems rivalry are predatory and examines the conditions under which production-process research, plant-modernization, and long-term full-requirements contracts are predatory.

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.

This volume contains articles and panel discussions delivered during the Thirty-Seventh Annual Fordham Competition Law Institute Conference on International Antitrust Law & Policy. About the Proceedings: Every October the Fordham Competition Law Institute brings together leading figures from governmental organizations, leading international law firms and corporations and academia to examine and analyze the most important issues in international antitrust and trade policy of the United States, the EU and the world. This work is the most definitive and comprehensive annual analysis of international antitrust law and policy available anywhere. The chapters are revised and updated before publication, where necessary. As a result, the reader receives up-to-date practical tips and important analyses of difficult policy issues. The annual volumes are an indispensable guide through the sea of international antitrust law. The Fordham Competition Law Proceedings are acknowledged as simply the most definitive US/EC annual analyses of antitrust/competition law published. Each annual edition sets out to explore and analyze the areas of antitrust/competition law that have had the most impact in that year. Recent "hot topics" include antitrust enforcement in Asia, Latin America: competition enforcement in the areas of telecommunications, media and information technology. All of the chapters raise questions of policy or discuss new developments and assess their significance and impact on antitrust and trade policy.

After 1 May 2004, the enforcement of European antitrust law entered a new era. At the same time as 10 new Member States joined the European Union, Regulation No 17, which had governed the enforcement of Articles 81 and 82 EC since 1962, was replaced by Regulation No 1/2003, which has ushered in far-reaching changes. This book brings together six essays which analyse the background and main characteristics of the new enforcement system, as well as a number of outstanding questions and potential areas of further reform, including the question whether private antitrust enforcement should be encouraged, and the question whether the decisional power in antitrust matters should be transferred to the courts. Special attention is given to the problem of the compatibility of the new enforcement system and of the practice of European antitrust enforcement with the requirements of the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, including the principle of ne bis in idem, the privilege against self-incrimination, and the right to an independent and impartial tribunal. On many of these issues, the discussion contained in this book is not only legal, but also includes an economic analysis from the perspective of efficient law enforcement.

There has a been a long-standing debate on the compatibility of EU competition law with fundamental rights protection, particularly as the latter is enshrined in the due process requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This book, a signal contribution to that debate, assesses two questions of paramount concern: first, whether the current level of fundamental rights protection in cartel enforcement falls within the accepted ECHR standards; and second, how the often conflicting objectives of effectiveness and adequate protection of fundamental rights could optimally be achieved. Following a detailed survey of relevant EU institutional, substantive, and procedural law rules, the author offers a set of persuasive normative responses to both questions. Proceeding from an in-depth analysis of the pertinent rights and legal nature of competition proceedings under EU and ECHR law, the author goes on to examine such elements of the perceived incompatibility as the following: investigatory powers vested in competition authorities; the privilege against self-incrimination; right to privacy; “fair trial” probatory requirements; degree of use of presumptions in EU practice; Article 6 ECHR guarantees pertaining to the presumption of innocence; proving coordination of competitive behaviour; proving restriction of competition; admissibility of evidence before EU Courts and the Commission; assessment of the attribution of liability rules; EU fining rules; judicial review of cartel decisions by EU Courts; and national sanctioning rules. The author’s extraordinarily thorough presentation is rounded off with a remarkably comprehensive bibliography that lists (in addition to books and articles) newspaper articles, EU regulations and directives, soft-law guidelines and “best practices”, EU and ECtHR case law, EU Advocate General opinions, European Commission decisions, and European Ombudsman decisions. General conclusions stress the necessity of introducing further reforms to enhance the effectiveness and legitimacy of fundamental rights in the context of competition proceedings. Few books have taken such a thorough and far-reaching approach to the reconciliation of “effective public enforcement” and “fundamental rights”, or of “effective deterrence” with the principles of legality, non-retroactivity, presumption of innocence, and ne bis in idem. In the depth of its appraisal of the entire spectrum of enforcement components from a fundamental rights perspective, the book is without peers. It will be warmly welcomed by any parties interested in the intersection of competition law and human rights.

This is the first book to examine the significance of European Union antitrust law for the future of sport in Europe. Drawing on multi-disciplinary perspectives from law, economics, sport management and politics, and including case studies about the European Super League (ESL) and the International Skating Union, the book explores key themes in contemporary sport, including governance, ownership and control; the European sport model; the regulatory autonomy of sports organisations; and the relationship between public policy, the law and sport. This is important reading for any advanced student, researcher, policy-maker or practitioner with an interest in sport management, sport law, European law or European politics.