EU Competition Law Devours Its Children: The Proliferation of Anti-Competitive Object and the Problem of False Positives

In the last decade, EU competition law reached a major turning point in its history. Anti-competitive object became an elusive and unpredictable rule, which boosts the risk of false positives and has a significant chilling effect. This article analyses this metamorphosis and the social damages it is causing, and proposes an alternative conception. The article demonstrates that the emerging new concept of anti-competitive object erroneously conflates ‘contextual analysis’, which has been part of the object-inquiry from the outset, and ‘effects-analysis’, which has no role to play here. It submits that both doctrinal and policy reasons confirm that anti-competitive object should be a category-building principle of ‘judicial rule-making’ (‘definition of the definition’) and not applicable to individual arrangements directly.

Distribution of new cars – no longer an issue for EU competition law?

Distribution cartels in the automotive sector used to be frequently dismantled and sanctioned by the European Commission and the EU Courts still some 15 years ago. In recent years, however, only a few cases have been reported at the national level of EU Member States. Is it because the distribution of new cars really ceased to be a competition problem as the European Commission declared when it removed this part of the automotive business from the specific Block Exemption Regulation for the automotive sector in 2010? The purpose of the present analysis is first to inspect the car distribution cases that emerged in the EU after the year 2000 and, second, to speculate somewhat whether new forms of distribution, brought by the digitalization of marketing and sales, cannot bring about also new risks to cartel agreements and other types of distortions of competition in car sales.

EU Competition Law as Responsive Law

This article proposes two broad ways to conceptualise EU competition law. EU competition law could be viewed as ‘autonomous law’ (‘AL’), namely as a closed normative system a technocratic tool consisting in a set of rules that prohibit undue restraints of trade. Or, EU competition law could be viewed as ‘responsive law’ (‘RL’), namely as a relatively open normative system and an interpretive practice that oscillates between openness and integrity. The responsiveness approach offers a compelling conceptualisation as it explains certain endogenous features of EU competition law: its fuzzy mandate, conceptually elastic vocabulary, and use of rules and standards. In addition, the responsiveness approach can clarify the role economics plays in EU competition law. It views economics as an ‘ideological science’, which, even though it cannot insulate this legal field from value disagreements and make it ‘autonomous’, it can provide a source for positive and normative interpretive statements. On this basis the responsiveness approach maintains that EU competition law is by design open—ie conceptually elastic and factually sensitive—and that its openness can enhance, but also undermine its integrity—ie its capacity to realise its objective in a rule of law compatible manner. These conflicts between openness and integrity are the cause of EU competition law's relative indeterminacy. To deal with the problem of indeterminacy, the RL approach proposes a tripartite legal-institutional modus operandi consisting in constructive interpretation, responsive enforcement, and catalytic adjudication. Hence, considering EU competition law as a form of responsive law has three major implications: first, it offers a new way for understanding how this legal field works and changes; second, it suggests a strategy for dealing with EU competition law's indeterminacy, and third it proposes a new framing for the discursive practices of EU competition law's epistemic community.

Enhanced Digitalisation and Competition Law Enforcement in Slovakia

Digitalisation is a challenge from the regulatory point of view. Competition law, as a special type of regulation, is no exception to this. The article explores the risks of digitalisation, especially the ones related to the enhanced use of pricing algorithms. In theory, pricing algorithms are not easily assessed from the perspective of competition law, let alone its application in practice. The prohibition of anticompetitive agreements (pursuant to Article 101 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)) is applied with certain difficulty to agreements created by using pricing algorithms. This is an unfortunate situation, as horizontal agreements represent one of the worst infringements of EU competition law, including price cartels or bid rigging. Apart from presenting a theoretical background, the article dives into the practice of the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic (AMO) in order to assess which practical issues the AMO might face when applying the theoretical concepts. In sum, the article asks from a theoretical perspective which issues of competition law have been introduced (or deepened) by the enhanced digitalisation, looking in particular to pricing algorithms. On top of that, the article explores the issues which may be encountered in practice, taking the Slovak jurisdiction as the example. The willingness and feasibility of the AMO to enforce digital issues such as pricing algorithms is assessed based on the previous acts of the AMO as well as the new Act on Protection of Competition, adopted by the Slovak parliament on 11 May 2021.

Competition Law: Convergence Through Law and Networks

Competition Law: Convergence through Law and Networks uses an evolutionary lens to explore how the EU competition law regime is undergoing change again with the introduction of the ECN+ Directive (2019/1) and the Damages Directive (2014/104). Modernization through Regulation 1/2003 was revolutionary. Alongside the move to a more economics-based approach by the Commission, enforcement was delegated to National Competition Authorities, releasing Commission time and resources to focus on much bigger and economically significant cases. This chapter examines how the European Competition Network is an important governance tool in developing coherence, convergence, and mutual cooperation and how the limitations of minimal procedural convergence led to the pendulum of evolution swinging back again towards the EU with the Damages and ECN+ Directive.

23. Particular sectors

This chapter deals with four issues. First it will briefly examine three sectors of the economy that are wholly or partly excluded from EU competition law, namely nuclear energy, military equipment and agriculture; the special regime that once existed for coal and steel products under the former European Coal and Steel Community (‘the ECSC’) Treaty is also mentioned in passing. Secondly, it will explain the application of the EU competition rules apply to the transport sector. Thirdly, the chapter will consider the specific circumstances of four so-called ‘regulated industries’, electronic communications, post, energy and water, where a combination of legislation, regulation and competition law seek to promote competition. Last, but by no means least, the current debate concerning digital platforms is discussed where it is likely that ex ante regulatory rules will be introduced, both in the EU and the UK, to address concerns about anti-competitive conduct and a tendency towards the monopolisation of markets.

6. The obligations of Member States under the EU competition rules

This chapter examines the obligations of Member States in relation to EU competition law. Specifically, it considers the obligations that Article 4(3) TEU and Articles 37 and 106 TFEU place upon Member States. Article 4(3) requires all Member States to take all appropriate measures to ensure fulfilment of the obligations arising out of the Treaties, and to avoid any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the EUs objectives. Article 106 particularly obligates Member States to refrain from enacting or maintaining measures, contrary to the rules provided in Article 18 and Articles 101 to 109 of the TFEU. Article 37 is concerned with state monopolies of a commercial character.

2. Overview of EU and UK competition law

This chapter provides a brief overview of EU and UK competition law and the institutions involved in formulating, interpreting and applying competition law in those jurisdictions. It also explains the relationship between EU competition law and the domestic competition laws of the Member States, in particular in the light of Article 3 of Regulation 1/2003. The rules of the European Economic Area are briefly referred to, and the trend on the part of Member States to adopt domestic competition rules modelled on those in the EU is also noted. Three diagrams at the end of the chapter explain the institutional structure of EU and UK competition law.