The Antitrust Hotch Potch

Conference Announcement - 2nd Junior UK Competition Practictioners Conference

The Editors of the Competition Law Journal are pleased to present:

The 2^nd Junior UK Competition Practitioners Conference

at the Competition Commission

on Friday 7 December 2007 at 2:00 pm

This conference is open to all those involved in UK competition law, economics and policy, whether in practice, in public service or in academia.

Due to the nature of the event and the capacity constraints, we have decided to impose the following conditions:

Admission to the conference is free. The conference programme is attached to this email.

• Applicants should be junior. For example, we would not expect applications from partners of law firms or economics consultancies, senior barristers, senior officials in public service or senior academics.
• If you wish to apply for a place, please do so personally.
• To ensure that there is a good cross-section of the junior ‘competition community’, we may have to limit the numbers of attendees from any one organisation.
• If you are given a place and subsequently discover that you are unable to take it up, please notify the organisers as soon as possible, so that your place may be given to someone else.

On the basis of expressions of interest to date we anticipate that demand will be extremely high. Please do contact us as soon as possible at julie.hamilton@catribunal.org.uk. Subject to the above, places will be given on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. If you have already expressed an interest in attending, you must still apply.

Download registration_form.pdf

G. Monti's Competition Law Blog

I am a longtime fan of G. Monti's work (LSE). I made extensive use of his illuminating CMLR paper on collective dominance ("The Scope of Collective Dominance Under Article 82 EC", (2001) 38(1) Common Market Law Review, 131).

The good news: G. Monti has launched a promising weblog, the "Competition Law Board". See here.

Nicolas

Lunch Talk on Settlements - Slides

Please find below the slides presented by Marisa Tierno-Centella (from the Commission) today at the GCLC lunch talk.

Nicolas

Download settlements_package_tierno_centella_29th_lunch_talk_of_the_gclc.pdf

Last Call

There are still a number of free seats available for the GCLC lunch talk tomorrow. Would I be a rational market player, I would price discriminate to sell the remaining tickets. Yet, if I did that, I would probably price below costs (our tickets cost 25€), and could face charges of predation on the Brussels market for antitrust events of less than 2 hours. Of course, I assume here that the GCLC holds a dominant position, which in my view is slightly presumptuous.

To market my tickets, I am thus left mere traditional advertisement means: "Please come numerous tomorrow, by filling in the below registration form. Settlements are The big issue today in EC antitrust law".

Download registration_form_29th_lunch_talk_of_the_gclc.pdf

Nicolas

Workshop on Market Definitions and "Like Products"

Trainees and officials from four Directorates-General of the European Commission – Competition, Internal Market and Services, Taxation and Custom Union, and Trade – are jointly organising a workshop on 14 December 2007 at the European Commission (Berlaymont building, 7th floor) from 9h30 to 12h30. The theme of the workshop is market definitions and "like products" in competition law, internal market law, tax law and trade law.

The workshop will be chaired by Mr. Stefan AMARASINHA (DG Trade and World Trade Institute) and will be structured as follows:

(1) an introductory lectio magistralis delivered by Professor Jacques BOURGEOIS (College of Europe and WilmerHale LLP)

(2) separate group work on an assigned case; a specialist from each DG will chair and provide guidance to each of the four groups:

- Mr. Stefan AMARASINHA, DG Trade
- Mr. Jan FOLTMAR, DG Taxation and Customs Union
- Dr. Oliver KOCH, DG Competition
- Mr. Peter SMITH, DG Internal Market and Services

(3) Final panel discussions where the Commission officials will play the role of rapporteurs of the four groups

Berlaymont building, 7th floor. European Commission. 200, rue de la Loi/Wetstraat. Brussels
métro: Schuman. Free of charges. Register at: workshop4dg@gmail.com

For more on the issue of like products, see here the paper posted by A. Emch on the unavoidable ssrn.

Nicolas

New paper on excessive pricing under EC law

I recently completed a paper on excessive pricing under EC law. Please find below the abstract.

Excessive pricing is an area of competition law which differs significantly from most others. First, the notion of excessive pricing has failed to stimulate much economic analysis in Europe. This is in great part due to the fact that most studies on the economics of abusive pricing have focused on exclusionary pricing behavior, as such abuses are more frequent than exploitative ones. Moreover, excessive pricing is an antitrust offence only in a limited number of jurisdictions. There is also a widely accepted view that competition authorities are ill-suited to carry out price controls, a task which should be better left to sector-specific regulators. Because they intervene on an ad hoc basis, i.e. to sanction specific anti-competitive behavior, competition authorities cannot easily transform themselves into price regulators. Price regulation is a long-term effort which requires quasi-permanent supervision.

Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to review the case-law of the EU and of some of its Member States dealing with the control of excessive prices. This paper will also discuss current enforcement trends by the European Commission and National Competition Authorities, including recent cases and policy pronouncements by senior competition law officials. As will be seen, there is a growing consensus among competition agencies that controlling prices should be limited to exceptional circumstances. Moreover, where such circumstances justify them, given the inherent risks of costly mistakes and unintended adverse effects, price controls should be based on a sound economic analysis of market circumstances and carried out with the utmost caution.

Damien

29th Lunch Talk of the GCLC - Direct Settlements in EC Competition Law

Speakers are Gerwin Van Gerven of Linklaters and Marisa Tierno-Centella from DG COMP. See link below for registration form.

Download registration_form_29th_lunch_talk_of_the_gclc.pdf

Nicolas

Antitrust Figure

N. Kroes advanced the following figure at last week's conference:

"We estimate that our cartel enforcement work saves the European economy around 4 billion euro each year".

I am always skeptical of such figures (besides the fact that a sum expressed in billions is meaningless to most citizens, which are unaware of the costs/benefits of public policies in general) : to calculate the benefits of cartel enforcement, one needs - in my humble view - first to assess the cost of cartel activity on the whole economy. In turn, one must then assess (i)  the share of these cartels that is effectively brought to an end by antitrust agencies and (ii) the share of these cartels which is deterred by antitrust enforcement.  The difficulty lies in assessing the total number of cartels and, in particular the number of undiscovered cartels which, ex hypothesi, remain secret... Would be useful to know the Commission's estimate on the number of undiscovered cartels, which would also give a clear picture of the institution's enforcement efficiency...

Nicolas

Conference in Brussels - Article 82 EC and other Enforcement Issues

I may find the answer to my question on the 82 guidelines soon. On 23 November 2007, the Flemish Section of the Brussels Bar will organize the third edition of the International Competition Conference. This year’s conference will be devoted to the current and future law on abuses of a dominant position. During the afternoon, various workshops will address current enforcement issues. See below for the programme.

Download 3rd_international_competition_conference_23_nov_2007.pdf

Guy Moquet's Letter - An Alternative Version for European Law Professors

See link below... A colleague, who prefers to remain unidentified, sent that to me. I really had a blast.

Download GuyMoquetcevisionnaire.pdf

Nicolas