Insurance companies and insurance activities are subject to profuse industry regulation, justified by potential market failures, but this does not exclude the applicability to them of Competition Law. Nevertheless, almost all legal systems worldwide foresee, one way or another, significant...

The use of soft law instruments is pervasive in the field of EU competition policy. This poses significant legal challenges derived from the progressive ‘hardening’ of these regulatory tools by the European Courts as a result of the application of the general principles of EU law. The...

Procurement activities conducted by the public buyer are very relevant for the proper working of the markets. Hence, the market activities of the public buyer should comply with the requirements of competition law - ie should not restrict or distort competitive outcomes derived from free market...

This paper focuses on the treatment of public procurement activities under EC competition law. After briefly outlining the competition economics of public procurement, the paper shows the perceived shortcomings of current EC competition rules and case-law to effectively tackle publicly-generated...

The development of a more competition-oriented public procurement system is possible, on the basis of the principle of competition that is embedded in the EC public procurement Directives. This paper explores the existence of the principle of competition, roughly delimits its scope, and broadly...

The relevance of effective competition in the public procurement setting can hardly be overstated, particularly in terms of value for money and system efficiency. However, the assessment of competition impacts (or distortions) derived from procurement still does not always rank on top of public...