The failure of the regulatory system is at least one of the contributing causes to the 2008 Financial Crisis. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank Act”) will have a far-reaching impact on the financial services industry particularly in its attempt to...

By reference to case-law and soft law in three jurisdictions (Canada, US and EU), this paper explores how courts and agencies carry out balancing exercises in the application of competition law. The paper identifies three approaches: utilitarian balancing, consumer welfare balancing, and...

A substantial number of cartels in the European Union are detected and enforced by the national competition authorities (NCAs). The effectiveness of domestic enforcement has been subject to extensive review and debates, which have recently culminated and resulted in the proposal for the ECN+...

The article focuses on the novelties introduced by the Damages Directive in the field of consensual settlements of disputes concerning private enforcement. The Damages Directive obliges Member States to ensure that the limitation period for bringing an action for damages is suspended for the...

On 11 June 2013, the European Commission adopted a package of measures to tackle the lack of an efficient and coherent private enforcement system of EU competition law in its Member States. In particular, a draft Damages Directive was proposed in order to meet the need for a sound European...

The European Commission (EC) and the European Courts have being reaffirming in the Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica cases that guide-prices established by sector regulators upon electronic communications incumbents cannot per se exclude that conducts with anticompetitive foreclosure effects,...

Effective enforcement of competition law is vital for the functioning of competitive markets. As competition authorities are constrained by scarce financial and human resources, it is neither possible, nor desirable, to enforce every possible competition law infringement. Hence, the power to set...

One of the criticisms against the new rules applicable to the granting of State aid to finance the provision of services of general economic interest in the "Almunia package" is that enforcement is likely to be their weakest point. Similarly, in the more general setting of the "private"...

The US competition agencies – the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – often share jurisdiction with sectoral regulators also charged with fostering competition, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This article...

This work underlines some of the main issues that Member States face in attempting to reconcile national tort law systems with EU goals in competition law. As a matter of fact, the very notion of private enforcement tends to achieve two different purposes: on the one hand, corrective justice...