Chillin'Competition

Yesterday not only did we, a bit surprisingly, fill the Chillin’Competition conference in less than an hour (there is now a decent waiting list that we will try to satisfy somehow), we also (or rather you) broke the record for number of visits to the blog in a day, with 2,044. Many thanks once again…

Since you seem to be in the mood for conference announcements (and given that the next few days will be packed with interesting stuff on which to comment) I’ll take advantage to advertise some pending courses and events in which we are involved:

• We have now closed the dates for the XIX edition of the EU and Spanish Competition Law Course that I co-direct with Luis Ortiz Blanco in Madrid and that also features Pablo and Nicolas among many others. It will run from 8 January until 11 March and, aside from the annual introduction by Nicolas Petit on 8 January will also include modules on cartels (11-13 January), horizontal and vertical agreements (18-20 January), abuse of dominance (1-3 February), merger control (8-10 February), sector Regulation and Competition (22-24 February) and State aid (29 February-2 March), as well as seminars on recent developments in 101 (29 January),102 and mergers (19 February) and competition law and technology (11 March). More  info is available here: XIX Curso de Derecho de la Competencia Europeo y Español IEB 2016

• In the coming weeks, and going against all promises I made to myself about saying no to speaking proposals,  I will be speaking about the legal challenges brought by the sharing economy (on 4 November, see here;) and about “online platform regulation” (on 17 November, see here).  Any suggested reads you might have on any of these would be much appreciated, particularly by the colleagues at my firm who will otherwise have to help me compile materials 😉

• Today I attended an interesting breakfast organized by our friends (and sponsors) CCIA and by EPICENTER on business investment, legal certainty and taxation the pending investigations on tax rulings (the two first decisions will apparently be out tomorrow). The main takeaway from the event is that it confirms the worrying trend of organizing events at 8.am in this town. For the first time in a long time I woke up earlier than my son, and that’s just unacceptable!

• On 29 October our friend Kevin Coates (who will, btw, make a much appreciated effort to speak at our conference) will participate in a Brussels Matters talk dealing with one of the topics that we have recently paid attention to on the blog: the notion of single and continuous infringements in cartel cases (Connor Maguire has quite a good eye for topics). For more info, click here.

• And on 30 October your favorite blogger, Pablo Ibañez Colomo, will come to Brussels to speak at the GCLC’s lunch talk on Post Danmark II. For more info, see here.