The ultimate goal of competition law is to promote competition and, in most jurisdictions, to enhance consumer welfare. Competition policy may be set aside due to special and exceptional circumstances, such as a financial crisis that threatens the stability of an economy. It is therefore important to have a clear understanding of competition law and the exceptions to it. The key issue that this book addresses is whether a financial crisis can justify the adoption of a more lenient approach to established legal standards as a result of the risks of the systemic crisis to the entire market. It...

With incisive and thought-provoking contributions from both leading academics and practitioners, this book addresses in detail the major areas in relation to the Commission Guidance Paper on Applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty (now Article 102). The paper has been at the center of much of the recent debate on antitrust policy in Europe and has generated significant controversy and intense debate. The authors contend that the guidance from the Commission is on the one hand entirely justifiable in its focus on consumer harm in identifying what constitutes an abuse, but that on the other it is...

Economic analysis plays a pivotal role in competition enforcement. Integrating an economic perspective on merger control with a legal perspective throughout, this is a comprehensive reference work on merger control in the EU. Each chapter includes an analysis of the economic methods that have been employed in merger cases or that can be employed in merger assessment, such as merger simulation and critical loss analysis.
Whilst focusing on EU practice, the work also highlights key procedures and and case law across the member states. A comparison with US procedure is also considered....

This book addresses the phenomenon of mergers that may result in non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets. Such cases are sometimes referred to as "non-collusive oligopolies", or "gap cases" and there is a concern that they might not be covered by the substantive test that some Member States use for merger assessment. Ioannis Kokkoris examines the argument that the European Community Merger Regulation (Regulation 4064/89) did not capture gap cases and considers the extent to which the revised substantive test in Regulation 139/2004 deals with the problem of non-collusive oligopolies. ...