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...

This paper concerns the relationship between public antitrust enforcement and private actions for damages, focusing in particular on the enforcement of Articles 81 and 82 EC. In the first half of the paper, I examine the respective roles of public antitrust enforcement and private actions for...

Private enforcement is an increasingly prominent and important aspect of EU competition law. The impending Directive on damages actions aims to strengthen and, to a degree, harmonise procedures for private competition litigation, while recent cases of the Court of Justice have consistently...

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 presents a model of penalties that reconciles the conflicting accounts optimal punishment by Becker, who argued penalties should internalize social costs, and Posner, who suggested penalties should completely deter offenses. The model delivers specific recommendations as to when...

Since the introduction of a formal commitments procedure in EU antitrust policy (Article 9 of Council Regulation 1/2003), the European Commission has extensively settled cases of alleged anticompetitive practices. In this paper, we use a formal model of law enforcement (Bebchuk, 1984; Shavell, 1988)...

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 digitalisation of the economy and the emergence of players like online platforms and other digital service providers have brought new challenges for the effective enforcement of EU laws. This contribution looks at how public enforcement could be optimised in the EU by enhancing co-operation...

The digitalisation of the economy and the emergence of players like online platforms and other digital service providers have brought new challenges for the effective enforcement of EU laws. This contribution looks at how public enforcement could be optimised in the EU by enhancing co-operation...