Towards the end of the Ordoliberal compact in EU competition law? (MaCCI Annual Conference)
The Annual Conference of the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation took place last week. I am very much grateful to the organisers for honouring the legacy and achievements of Professor Heike Schweitzer.
The script of the keynote I delivered can be found here. It focused on the Ordoliberal tradition, which Professor Schweitzer continued, and which I came to appreciate and study thanks to her. Its core insights come across as particularly relevant at this juncture. Ordoliberals’ concern with unchecked (private and public) power and its impact on democracy resonates more than it has in decades.
Paradoxically, the zeitgeist appears to be moving away from what I call the Ordoliberal compact, that is, an approach to policy-making that revolves around an independent authority that is constrained by law and is subject to judicial review (and which is behind the unlikely and resounding success of European competition policy since the 1950s).
This technocratic approach to competition policy is increasingly questioned. An emerging body of literature deems it excessively narrow and (unduly) insulated from the broader political landscape. Similarly, legal constraints on administrative action have come under critical scrutiny.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, moving away from the Ordoliberal compact may weaken competition authorities vis-a-vis powerful private (and public) actors. In addition, it may affect the effectiveness and credibility of enforcement.
Chillin'Competition 
You raise an important issue – but one that needs to recognise the changes to industries. In the world we have lived in we bought goods and services locally. Competition was a function of products bought and sold that had similar characteristics and prices. Market definition in that world makes sense in terms of product features functions and prices by location.
However, we now live in a world where most consumer goods are bought and sold using handsets. We need to recognise that the world has moved on and the narrow confines of a law of competition that is divorced from laws that relate to online harms, privacy, security, plurality of the media and freedom of speech is one that is too narrow to operate with relevance.
reform is needed – that should not abandon the ordoliberal tradition but build upon it.
best,
tim
Tim Cowen
26 March 2025 at 7:25 pm