What drives popular support for state-enforced competition policy? What is it about antitrust law that garners approval from both the public and courts, to the point of demonizing large firms convicted of antitrust offenses? In this book Adi Ayal argues that the populist roots of antitrust are still with us, guiding sentiment towards a legal regime that has otherwise shifted towards economic analysis. Antitrust is very much about fairness and morality; this book assesses how modern policy has hijacked popular support - based on traditional conceptions of political and economic power - to...

This monograph examines how European Union law and regulation address concentrations of private economic power, which impede free information flows on the Internet to the detriment of Internet users' autonomy. In particular, competition law, sector specific regulation (if it exists), data protection and human rights law are considered and assessed to the extent they can tackle such concentrations of power for the benefit of users. Using a series of illustrative case studies of Internet provision, search, mobile devices and app stores, and the cloud, the author demonstrates the gaps that...

Now available in paperback This book explores the interface between competition law and market integration in the application of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), focusing on the notion of 'market separation'-namely conduct that may hinder cross-border trade. The discussion reviews, among other things, the treatment of geographic price discrimination and exclusionary abuse, by which out-of-state competitors are affected. 'Market separation' cases are treated in the book as a case study for appraising the interface between competition and the Internal...

***This book offers a well-argued and insightful critical assessment of the shortcomings of international trade and competition rules in tackling interventionist State measures in the context of an economic crisis. Dawar offers an evidence-rich account of the challenges that State protectionism creates for international trade liberalisation and for the protection of competition in international markets. Her insights will be particularly interesting in the context of current events leading to another surge of State economic interventionism, both for academics and for policy-makers with an...

The principal aim of this book is to chart the emergence of experimentalist governance in the implementation of EU competition law as a combined response both to subsidiarity concerns in EU federalism and to an increasingly dynamic and heterogeneous economic environment. The book will contribute to ongoing debates about the current state of EU competition law and supply an alternative account of both emergent trends and its future direction. By focussing on experimentalist governance it is offering a truly innovative perspective on the question of the implementation of EU competition law.

This book explores the tools that the European rules on State aid place in the hands of competitors when it comes to fighting subsidies and other state measures of financial assistance to firms. In order to do so, the book scrutinizes the means of redress available to competitors before national courts (private enforcement), as well as the opportunities that they have to make their voice heard in the course of the European Commission's enforcement procedures (public enforcement). The insights provided by the book will lead to a better understanding of the rights of private parties under the...

Article 106(2) TFEU is an enigma. It provides for the disapplication of any Treaty rule with respect to Services of General Economic Interest (SGEIs). On the one hand, it is said to be an indispensable mediation mechanism between market and non-market objectives. On the other, in respect of the qualification of activities as SGEIs, the General Court has declared that there are no controlling principles. The operation of Article 106(2) has been a source of enduring political, legal and economic controversy. This book enters that debate with an active scepticism towards conventional...