Chillin'Competition

In just four weeks, on Monday 3 July we will be holding a high-level half-day (15-19 p.m.) workshop in Brussels to discuss the role of the EU Courts in competition law.

This workshop will be jointly organized by Chillin’Competition (i.e. Pablo and myself), Fernando Castillo and Eric Gippini, from the Commission’s Legal Service, authors of the book “Evidence, Proof and Judicial Review in EU Competition Law”, that we will also be presenting at the workshop.

We would like to explore both what has happened in the past 60 years and what could, should or might happen in a new scenario, with an enlarged General Court, a fall in the number of annulment proceedings and an apparent rise in preliminary references following the decentralization (and delegalization?) of competition enforcement, among others. We intend to discuss theory and practice objectively, from different perspectives, and to identify possible myths, challenges or gaps concerning judicial review of competition cases.

These are, as you know, among our preferred topics here at the blog (see e.g. here and here) as well as the subject-matter (in part) of Pablo’s forthcoming book, “The Shaping of EU Law”.

In order to gather different expert views we will be inviting approximately 15 high-level speakers from the Institutions (we already have high level representatives from both Courts and the Commission), academia and private practice to share a brief reflection (within 5 minutes) on any issue related to judicial review on which they may have strong or interesting views  (for an example, click here). We will then have some time to discuss every point also hearing the views of other attendees.

The workshop will take place at the University Foundation/Fondation Universitaire in Brussels (Rue d’Egmont, 11, 1000 Brussel)

We will very soon be back with more information. We will be personally inviting a number of people, and will then open up registrations (for free) to anyone interested (although places are limited this time to 140).

Registrations will be possible via a link that we will be making available on the blog on 19 June at 10.am 

An exception: anyone willing to come from the GC / CJEU will have a guaranteed seat (in that case please just drop us a line).

P.S. We hear that at a recent conference at Oxford University attendees were given ice cream; well, we welcome competition and accept the challenge…