Chillin'Competition

I realized yesterday that the slides used by all speakers at the Brussels School of Competition’s and Liège Competition and Innovation Institute’s very interesting conference on Commitment Decisions in EU Competition Policy are available here  (the image above corresponds to one of mines ( Lamadrid_Commitments); as an animated GIF it looked better in slidehow).

As for my presentation, I don’t think I said anything that was particularly original. I essentially did a 20 minutes quick overview and categorization of  the commitment decisions adopted so far on the bases of  (a) the (real) underlying reasons to resort to them, which may not always have to do with procedural economy considerations; (b) the sectors they affect (you can observe clear clusters that provide useful insights regarding enforcement priorities complementing regulatory initiatives -or lack thereof-); (c) the theories of harm at issue in each case and (d) the remedies made binding. This exercise made (even more) evident that both the theories of harm and the remedies that we see in these cases are nowhere to be found in Art. 7 infringement decisions. My purpose was merely to provide an objective account of these cases, so I left the discussion on the pros and cons of this approach to my fellow panelists.

Btw, the Liège Competition and Innovation Institute will also be holding other two interesting conferences in the coming days:

Intel v Commission: More eco or more ordo fiendly? next Monday 16 of June

and

The Commission’s Decisions in the Samsung and Motorola Cases – IP v. Competition 2.0?” on 11 July

Have a nice w-e!