Chillin'Competition

As any other bias – including prosecutorial bias – Commission bashing is bad (and boring).

So the other day, I thought to myself what makes a true”Commission basher” (I was told confidentially that my piece on conflicts of interests had been seen as Commission bashing :()?

Here’s a personal four-pronged proxy. To be a Commission basher one must:

1. never say anything good about the Commission’s output
2. reserve criticism only to the Commission, and fail to extend to other EU organs
3. address criticism exclusively to the Commission, and not to other competition agencies
4. express criticism in crushing language

At times, I reckon that the content of this blog may have read a bit like Commission bashing. Since we don’t want our readers to have this impression, two clarifications are in order.

Number 1 is that good news don’t sell. This may explain that this blog tends to focus on bad case-law, which is also funnier to comment upon. Note that we have never refrained from saying very good things on EU competition law developments, much to the contrary. Recent examples include our comments on Post Danmark, on DG COMP’s effects-based approach or on the Article 102 TFEU Guidance paper, etc. Alfonso even turned cyranesque, with his poignant love declaration to Commission officials.

Number 2 is that we tend to focus a lot on Commission’s output because it has kept a predominant position in EU competition enforcement. Yet, we often cover the case-law of the EU courts too, as well as interesting national competition developments when we can.

The bottom-line: at Chillin’competition we are not Commission bashers.