This paper aims at highlighting the Commission's approach towards the relation between sector specific regulation and general competition law, especially concerning energy markets and the road to Internal Market objective.We firstly present Trinko case, in order to focus on two crucial and...

This paper analyses the role of the European Commission in taking cases of abuse of dominance in the telecommunications sector since its liberalisation in 1998. The argument is that the Commission has played a very active antitrust role, in particular at the beginning of the liberalisation, and...

Brands and brand management have become a central feature of the modern economy and a staple of business theory and business practice. Contrary to the law’s conception of trademarks, brands are used to indicate far more than source and/or quality. This volume begins the process of broadening...

This paper examines the effectiveness of the administrative fines imposed by the European Commission on cartels from an economic perspective. It reviews the theory, practice, and evidence of optimal fines and assesses whether the European Commission fines, leniency, and settlement procedures...

In dealing with telecom operator and internet mergers in the late 1990s the European Commission adopted a pessimistic view of competition based on the then emerging theory of network effects. This paper takes a short and critical look at the Commission's use of network effects theory, and its...

States and their representatives, national governments, play a key role in national telecommunication markets. As lawmakers, they determine the playing field of the agents in the markets and the decision powers of national regulators. Simultaneously, they are involved in appointing presidential...

International mobile roaming has been subject to market interventions since the 1990s, first requiring operators to be provide customers with roaming, then trying to limit the increasing prices, that were seemingly immune to the effects of competition. The European Commission, in trying to...

In a referendum on 23rd June 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) voted for ‘Brexit’, i.e., to leave the European Union (EU). After some delay the government will invoke Article 50 TEU, which would begin a two-year period of negotiation for a withdrawal agreement, after which the EU treaties would...

In this paper we will examine the issue of ownership unbundling and forced divestiture remedies imposed in a series of recent competition law cases of the energy market - examined in other papers - in relation to the possible existence of a series of legal obstacles. These energy market...