Chillin'Competition

It’s July; the weather is good even in Brussels; you should be either on holidays, enjoying outdoors, or finishing off work in order to be able to go out and to do some photosynthesis; but nevertheless you’re reading a competition law blog… (yes, writing it is even worse, but we aren’t talking about us now…).

So, there is cogent, consistent and sufficient evidence to indicate that you’re a bit of a geek. If that’s the case, these are 3 recommendations of short reads, all of which deal with issues on which we’ve touched in the past:

– Wouter Wils, Ten Years of Regulation 1/2003, A retrospective– A very good and concise overview of the history and results of the procedural modernization of EU competition law (my only negative comment is that, for some unknown reason, it doesn’t cite my masterpiece, excellent, quite good, good, decent? more or less tolerable paper on the issue…)

– Thomas Graf – who together with Maurits Dolmans (click here for his Friday Slot interview) is the main lawyer for Google in the framework of the Commission’s investigation-  has written a blog post about Google’s proposed commitments., available here. It’s always interesting to know the impressions of those with first hand knowledge of cases. My own post on this subject is referred to as a one among three “thoughtful comments”; not sure if that is because my post was any good or because we actually have similar views on the main issues…

– Also on Google, last week I received a piece published in the Financial Times positing that “true progressivists” would seek Google’s break up.

Actually, this was of quite some interest to me, since (as frequent skimmers may remember)  I’ve devoted a few posts to what “true progressivism’ or “radical centrism”should mean to the antitrust world: see here (for the original post), here (for the short article developing the post), and here (for an interview in which I’m quoted saying that both the post and the article are superficial exercises of wishful thinking -I’ve original marketing techniques, you see..-).

Not being a fan of labels, I would have more or less defined myself as a radical centrist, and nevertheless I fail to see the reasons for Google’s breakup; query: does that make me a bad centrist?! The author of this interesting piece is Prof. Richard Sennet, a LSE professor. Since I didn’t recognize the name I “Googled” it and saw that he’s professor and expert in urban sociology.

Now, this is a worrying development for most competition lawyers. First it was economists who (quite successfully) started to eat “our cake” become antitrust experts, and now it’s urban sociologists!!  I guess it’s time to retaliate and send the FT my expert piece on the effects or rural migration in postmodern Spain..  😉