By their nature, remedies are central to competition law enforcement and represent the yardstick against which the efficiency of the overall system can be measured. Yet very rarely have remedies been treated in a horizontal and comprehensive manner from the combined perspectives of substance, process and policy. The present volume, developed in partnership with the College of Europe’s Global Competition Law Centre (GCLC), provides coherent, practical, and authoritative commentaries by leading experts from the GCLC’s incomparable network. The contributions – originally presented at the 2019 GCLC annual conference – examine remedies to assess the overall effectiveness of competition law enforcement in merger, antitrust and State aid matters. The overall topic is presented under five headings: objectives and limitations of remedies; types of remedies in competition law enforcement; implementation and process; ex post assessment of remedies and policy lessons; and national and international approaches. The high-profile and wide-ranging group of authors includes the Director-General of the European Commission’s competition department, lawyers from major international firms, and well-known economists and academics specialising in competition law. With a sharp focus on how to make competition rules work well in today’s digital environment, this systematic and coherent analysis illuminates an issue that we need to fully grasp and understand in order to make sense of competition policy, law and enforcement in the years and decades to come.

Private Enforcement of European Competition and State Aid Law Current Challenges and the Way Forward Edited by: Ferdinand Wollenschläger, Wolfgang Wurmnest & Thomas M.J. Möllers The overlapping European Union (EU) regimes of competition law and State aid law both provide mechanisms allowing private plaintiffs to claim compensation for losses or damages. It is thus of significant practical value to provide, as this book does, analysis and guidance on achieving enforcement of such claims, written by renowned authorities in the two fields. The book examines the two areas of law both from an EU perspective and from the perspectives of private enforcement in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. In country reports for these major jurisdictions, as well as in more general and comparative chapters, the authors focus on such issues as the following: impediments to private enforcement; which entity is liable for damages; binding effect of decisions of competition authorities; limitation of actions; collective actions and pooling of claims; enforcement of the standstill obligation (Article 108(3) TFEU); remedies and information deficits; cooperation and coordination between national courts and the European Commission; transposition of the so-called Damages Directive (Directive 2014/104/EU) by the EU Member States; extent to which the strengthening of private enforcement of competition law has a spillover effect on State aid law; and prospects for harmonisation of State aid law. A concluding section identifies enforcement deficits and proposes ways to improve the existing legal framework. As an in-depth assessment of key obstacles and best practices in private enforcement actions, this highly informative and practical volume facilitates choice of the best forum for competition and State aid law cases. Academics and practitioners engaged with this important area of European law will appreciate the authors’ awareness of the economic need and legal particularities which could generate an effective European system of private enforcement of legitimate claims under EU competition and State aid law.

Competition, or anti-trust, law concerns the regulation of competition and is designed to ensure that the competitive dynamic on a market is maintained. Given the rise in market based economies, the jurisdictions which have adopted competition law regimes have expanded significantly over the last decade.

This EYIEL special issue examines the interaction between international investment law and competition law. Although issues related to both international investment law and competition law arise regularly in international legal practice and are examined together, scholarly analysis largely treats them as parallel universes. As a result their actual and potential overlap has yet to be sufficiently explored. In this light, International Investment Law and Competition Law discusses a variety of topics at the intersection of investment and competition, including the interaction between competition-related provisions and investment protection standards in free trade agreements; investors’ anti-competitive behaviour and illegal investments; state aid schemes and foreign investors’ legitimate expectations; EU member States’ compliance with investment awards as (illegal) state aid under EU law; State-owned enterprises and competitive neutrality; and interactions between public procurement, investment and competition law.

This book explores how the EU’s enforcement of competition law has moved from centralisation to decentralisation over the years, with the National Competition Authorities embracing more enforcement powers. At the same time, harmonisation has been employed as a solution to ensure that the enforcement of EU competition rules is not weakened and the internal market remains a level playing field. While employing a comparative law argument, the book, accordingly, analyses the need for harmonisation throughout the different stages of development of the EU’s competition law enforcement (save Merger control and State Aid), the underlying rationale, and the extent to which comparative studies have been undertaken to facilitate the harmonisation process from an historical perspective. It also covers the Directives, such as the Antitrust Damages Directive and the ECN+ Directive. Investigating both public and private enforcement, it also examines the travaux préparatoires for the enforcement legislation in order to discover the drafters’ intent. The book addresses the European and the Member States’ perspectives, namely, the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, as harmonisation proceeds through dialogue and cooperation between the two levels. Lastly, it explores the extent to which harmonisation of the competition law enforcement framework has been accepted and implemented in the Member States’ legal systems, or has led to the fragmentation of the national systems of the CEE countries.

Competition, or Antitrust, law is now a global phenomenon. It operates in more than 100 countries and the relationships among competition law systems are often complex and opaque. Competition law is also new to many countries, which creates uncertainty about how decisions will be made in these jurisdictions. This makes it critically important to understand both the similarities and differences among the systems and the relationships between them. A succinct introduction, this title breaks down the complicated and foreboding topic of competition law. Divided into four parts, this book covers the elements of competition laws, its decisions, targets, and globalization and the future of competition law. It also provides global context by looking at competition law in the US, Europe, and growing markets like Asia and Latin America. This title covers the most pressing issues of competition law in an informative and concise way. Drawing on his lifetime of global experience and research, David J. Gerber's Competition Law and Antitrust is an essential tool for anyone interested in competition or antitrust law.