Chillin'Competition

I’m in a train preparing the slides for my intervention next Tuesday at the Spanish Competition Authority´s and USP CEU’s conference on the fight against cartels in the Iberoamerican Community (EU, Spain, Portugal, Brasil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia).

The conference will also be an opportunity to present a hot-off-the-press book on cartels (pictured above) to which I have contributed with a quite significant number of pages, taking care of the chapters on cartel procedure (together with JL Buendía) and on cartel evidence (together with Ana Balcells). The book is part of a project directed by Jerónimo Maillo and coordinated by Javier Porras.

My intervention on Tuesday will focus on one of the sub-topics discussed in one of the two chapters: the interpretation of the notion of “single and continuous infringement” in EU and Spanish competition law. Despite being the essence of the “cartel offence” and a feature of practically every single cartel decision, there are still perplexing divergences in how the notion is interpreted throughout the EU. I also see some divergent trends: whereas the concept keeps on expanding at the national level, EU Courts seem to be adopting a more restrictive interpretation, particularly when it comes to establishing individual liability for the whole infringement (the trend was made evident with Coppens and Aalbers and again only a few weeks ago in the Toshiba Judgment). If any of you has thoughts on the matter, I would appreciate if you would send them my way (I can offer a beer in reward).

And since I’m asking for favours, if anyone from Colombia reads this (I’ve just checked the blog’s stats and it seems we have a good number of Colombian readers), I’ll be happy to return there to speak about anything. It doesn’t have to be competition law: I only need a excuse to visit my brother living in Bogota pretending it’s a work-related trip 🙂

And since I’m mixing famly and cartels: I recently told my mum that I had worked in a case where cartel meetings had taken place in a hotel we know well. She thought there could be a niche there, and has asked me to please advertise to any potential cartellists that I know that my parent’s hotel has very suitable facilities for cartel meetings, is quite hard to get to (undoubtedly an advantage for this purposes) and can offer a tie/ discount in legal services. Special prices would apply to continuous infringements.

Finally, those interested in cartels should know that our friends at ERA are holding a workshop on cartel enforcement in the EU in Brussels on 29 October. For more info, click here.