At the end of 2018, the European Parliament and Council adopted Directive (EU) 2019/1, often referred to as the 'ECN+ Directive', which, among other things, contains provisions ensuring the independence of the competition authorities of the EU Member States (national competition authorities or...

This paper deals with the powers of the European Commission and the competition authorities of the EU Member States to enforce Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, and with the procedural rights and guarantees that circumscribe or limit these powers. It focuses in particular on the interplay between the...

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...

In European legal scholarship, many articles discuss the equilibrium reached in the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) when the EU antitrust prohibitions apply to, and restrain, the free and ordinary use of intellectual property rights (“IPRs”). We call this...

In Book IX of his History of Rome (written around 25 BC) Titus Livy speculates about a hypothetical confrontation between Rome and Alexander the Great. What if Alexander had not died at the end of the Asian campaign but had returned to Europe to attack Rome? Livy argues that Rome and Carthage...

This article examines the practice of the European Commission in fining undertakings for the obstruction of the Commission’s investigation. For years, the Commission has fined such procedural infringements by qualifying them as an aggravating circumstance in the decision in the substantive...

The fragmentation of EU competition law enforcement in various institutions (competition authorities, courts) and legal provisions (Articles 101, 102 TFEU, merger control) have led to the development of ad hoc remedial action without this being backed up by a solid theory of competition law...

This study concerns the way agreements between a dominant supplier and its customers that restrict the ability of those customers to buy from the dominant firm’s rivals, including exclusive dealing, conditional rebates and tying and bundling (hereafter, “vertical restraints”) have been...

The main issue that is still disrupting private enforcement of competition law is the calculation of damages. The 2014 Damages Directive contains some alleviations. Particularly Article 17(2) Damages Directive foresees a rebuttable presumption that cartels cause harm. Despite the clear statement...

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...