Chillin'Competition

It’s quite frequent in our line of business to hear accusations against the Commission for acting as investigator, prosecutor, judge and executor at the same time.

Well, in a case decided the day before yesterday by a Brussels Commercial Court, the Commission acted as all those, and also as a complainant…. and lost.

You read well

As some of you may remember, after fining the companies involved in the elevator cartel with 992 million back in 2007, the Commission tried to show the world that it is feasible to go before a national Court and ask for damages, so it went to a Belgian Court to ask for compensation for the damages allegedly suffered by the Institution (estimated at 6 million), given that it had to pay a cartelized price for the elevators installed in its buildings.

[Btw, I remember hearing Richard Whish saying once that if the Commission really wanted to pick the case that had caused the greatest harm to its officials, then it should have targeted the beer cartel (I confess I’ve used this joke a couple of times…)].

The Belgian Court has ruled that “on sait pas faire ça” and that “ici c’est pas l’ Europe, c’ est la Belgique” rejected the Commission’s contention that there is a legal presumption that every cartel causes damage, and held that the Institution had failed to prove the overcharging and the causality link.

No comment.

Actually, I have one: unlike their EU counterparts, national Courts lately seem to be getting increasingly less deferential to the Commission, and to EU Law for that matter (a topic interesting enough to deserve an ad hoc post)

P.S. A due acknowledgement: I became aware of this development thanks to a Lewis Crofts’ piece for MLEX, not the greatest Lewis in the UK, but close (like in the case of Prof. Whish above, I’m also copying this joke from another big guy in the competition world).

P.S. 2: The pics above are actually of the engraving that decorates my living room, A Caucus Tale and a Long Race, by Salvador Dali, inspired by the work of another famous brit named Lewis. The back of the painting reads as follows:  “Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, “Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you. –Come, I’ll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I’ve nothing to do.” Said the mouse to the cur, “Such a trial, dear Sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.” “I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” Said cunning old Fury: “I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.”‘

The Competition Law Course that Luis Ortiz Blanco and I direct at the IEB in Madrid is turning 18 this year.

It’s not the first time that we say this here, but the line-up of more than 50 high-profile guest speakers who come every year from all over Europe to enjoy Madrid lecture in Madrid is a true Who’s Who of EU competition law experts. Moreover, the 115 hours of scheduled classes allow for a more detailed coverage than that offered by many other competition law courses on the market. About half of the course is lectured in English. Price wise the course is unbeatable: full registration is available for 3,000 euros.

The final program for each module and seminar has yet to be confirmed, but the overall structure and dates have been set, so I’ve included the info below.

The 2015 program will be structured as follows:

– An inaugural/introductory session by the former-blogger-now-full-time-Professor-Monsieur-Nicolas-Petit will take place on January 9.

– A module on cartels (coordinated by Luis Ortiz Blanco, Garrigues) will be held on 12-14 January.

– A module on other restrictive agreements and practices (coordinated by Juan Andrés García Alonso; Peugeot) will take place on 19-21 January

– On 30 January there will be a seminar on recent developments in relation to Art. 101 (coordinated by Fernando Castillo de la Torre and Eric Gippini Fournier, both from the Legal Service of the European Commission).

– A module on abuse of dominance (coordinated by myself) will take place on 3-5 February.

– A module on merger control (coordinated by Jerónimo Maíllo; San Pablo CEU University) will be held on 10-12 February.

– A seminar on recent developments in abuse of dominance and merger control coordinated by Cecilio Madero (Deputy Director General, DG Comp), Nicholas Banasevic (Head of Unit at DG COMP) and Milan Kristof (Référendaire at the ECJ) will be held on 20 February.

– A module on competition law and regulation in network industries (coordinated by my co-blogger Pablo Ibañez Colomo, LSE) will be held on 2-4 March.

– A module on the application of competition and state aid rules to public entities (coordinated by José Luis Buendía -Garrigues- and Jorge Piernas -Universidad de Murcia-) will take place on 5-6 March. State aid seminar: Seminario Ayudas de Estado

– A seminar on Competition Law in the Technology Sector (coordinated by Alvaro Ramos -Cisco Systems- and myself) on 13 March.

– A seminar on competition law in non-adversarial scenarions  (coordinated by Juan Andrés García Alonso; Peugeot) to be held on 27 March.

Anyone interested can register both for the full program or just for specific module/s or seminar/s. If you’re interested, feel free to drop me a line at alfonso.lamadrid@garrigues.com

For more info, click here: competencia2015.

P.S. Thanks go to Araoz y Rueda, Clifford Chance, Compass Lexecon, Cuatrecasas Gonçalves Pereira, Garrigues, Gómez-Acebo y Pombo, MLAB, NERA and Uría Menéndez for agreeing to sponsor the course.