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...

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,...

Following the Jussila and Menarini judgments, it is now entirely clear that Article 6 ECHR, as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights, provides no grounds for abandoning the system in which the European Commission both investigates suspected infringements of the EU antitrust...

The EC antitrust prohibitions are regularly invoked in private litigation as a shield. Private parties also play an important role in public antitrust enforcement through complaints to the competition authorities. However, in marked contrast with the situation in the US, private actions for...

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+...

Consumers suffer from high drug prices, which stem in large part from pharmaceutical companies’ anticompetitive games. This essay discusses the crucial role antitrust enforcement agencies can play in addressing pay-for-delay settlements and product hopping and draws lessons from this...

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...

The present paper analyzes the interaction between the economic review of the probition of abuses of a dominant position (Article 82 EC) on the one hand and the efforts to enhance private enforcement of competition law through private damage claims on the other hand. The paper argues that...

This paper demonstrates that the concepts of harm and damages as they are used in tort law pose some serious conceptual problems in the area of antitrust law. Consequently, there are some limits to the private enforcement of antitrust law via damages actions that have to be taken into account...