Chillin'Competition

I have just uploaded on ssrn (see here) a new paper on judicial review in EU merger control. I am delighted that the paper is forthcoming in European Law Open, a new, fully open access journal run by a group of leading EU law scholars.

In light of recent case law, the paper addresses an eternal debate in EU merger control: whether, and if so how, one can disentangle issues of law (which are subject to full review in the EU legal order) from complex economic assessments (controlled for manifest errors).

The question (which has both a constitutional and a competition law dimension) is whether the two standards of review can co-exist or whether, in practice, one will inevitably exercise its gravitational pull over the other.

It seems to me that this debate is particulaly relevant at a time of technological and economic change. It has been suggested that, in this new reality, the administrative authority would benefit from greater leeway to experiment and take risks to tackle unprecedented substantive issues. The paper discusses the impact that such rebalancing of powers could have on the merger control regime.

I look forward to your comments on it (as usual, nothing to disclose).