Chillin'Competition

The tickets for the 3rd Chillin’Competition conference were all gone almost immediately, and after half an hour the waiting list already had 200 people.

Whereas it’s clear that we will not be able to fit everyone, we will do our best to reduce the waiting list to the minimum possible (we have some ideas, but we need to check whether they are feasible).

In any event, we need to think of a solution for next time. I guess an auction remedy might do the trick 😉

To register to the 2017 Chillin’Competition conference, click here

The 3^rd edition of the Chillin’Competition Conference is poised to be greatest event in the history of law. Well, that may have been an understatement…

The program is below. And here are 10 things you should know about it:

1)      The program features names, but it does not say much about substantive content. That is because we want to give speakers freedom to talk about the most interesting stuff they have to say. By the way, we are enormously grateful to all of them, particularly to Commissioner Vestager.

2)      We will be striving to foster conversations rather than the usual monologues to which you may have grown accustomed at other conferences, and we will even be having Ted @Chillin’Competition talks (if any IP expert reads this, please let me know whether crossing the word does the trick). This is supposed to be an interactive, dynamic and chilled debate; tough job for moderators and speakers, but surely good news for attendees.

3)      This time, and together with the big names of today, we have also invited some relatively new faces (they are the big names of tomorrow, so you better get used to them!).

4)      We have found a new and pretty original venue “Area 42”, not far from the Madou tower; we hope you’ll like it as much as we do.

5)      One of the reasons for switching venue is that other places “bundle” the catering. It was important for us to have the freedom to have the catering done by “We Exist”.

6)      “We Exist” is an NGO, created by and for Syrian refugees, with whom we have cooperated in the past, so expect some Syrian delicacies.  Even if you can’t make it to the conference you can participate in their events, or support their crowdfunding campaign to buy a food truck.

7)      The conference remains free. That is all thanks to our sponsors (to be announced soon).

8)      Every attendee will receive a special gift from Chillin’Competition (that is, if the shipment from China arrives on time and without major damage).

9)      Unfortunately, we won’t be able to fit in more than 270 people…

10)  Registrations open on Monday 25 September at 10am via a link that we will be posting on the blog at exactly that time.

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THE CHILLIN’COMPETITION CONFERENCE

25 October 2017 (Area42, Rue des Palais 46, Brussels)

9-9.45: Registration and coffee

9.45-10: Introduction- A Year in Review 

Alfonso Lamadrid (Garrigues and Chillin’Competition)

10-11.15: Competition Law Everywhere?

Pascale Déchamps (Oxera)

Kyriakos Fountoukakos (Herbert Smith Freehills)

Damien Geradin (EUCLID)

Sascha Schubert (Freshfields)

Moderator: Kevin Coates (Covington&Burling)

11.15–12.30: The Real Center Stage

Beatriz de Guindos (Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia)

Philip Marsden (Competition and Markets Authority)

Jacqueline Riffault-Silk (Cour de Cassation)

Eddy de Smijter (European Commission)

Jacques Steenbergen (Belgian Competition Authority)

Moderator: Niall Collins (Mason Hayes & Curran)

12.30-14: Syrian Lunch by the NGO “We Exist”

14-15: Ted@Chillin’Competition

Pablo Ibañez Colomo (LSE, College of Europe and Chillin’Competition)

Kai-Uwe Kühn (University of East Anglia and CRA)

Miguel de la Mano (Compass Lexecon)

Mark Powell (White&Case)

Antoine Winckler (Cleary Gottlieb)

15-15.45: Keynote by Commissioner Vestager

15.45-16: Coffee

16-17.30 Mergers and Disquisitions

Gavin Bushell (Baker&McKenzie)

Catriona Hatton (Baker Botts)

Adrian Majumdar (RBB)

Michele Piergiovanni (European Commission)

Moderators: Susana Cabrera (Garrigues) and Paul McGeown (Wilson Sonsini)

17.30-19 Looking Ahead

Luca Crocco (Latham&Watkins)

Natura Gracia (Linklaters)

Pola Karolzcyk (Sidley Austin)

Jürgen Schindler (Allen&Overy)

Gianni de Stefano (Hogan Lovells)

Moderator: Peter Alexiadis (Gibson Dunn)

19 Onwards: Wine Tasting (and Pairing)

As announced back in July, our next Chillin’Competition conference will take place on 25 October in Brussels. We are quite satisfied with our previous events, but this time we want to do something even more interesting, dynamic and even fun. As always, it will be free for attendees. On Friday we will publish the program together with an explanation of some of the novelties envisaged for this new edition of the conference. 

The registration window will then open via a link that we will publish here on Monday 25 September at 10 a.m. Last year all availabe tickets were gone in 6 minutes, so you better be quick! Unfortunately we have had to keep the maximum number of attendees at 275.

***

Since it may be problematic for a blog (an online platform after all) to advertise only its own conference, and because we want to prove that organizing our own conference was intended to address a market failure that causes an insufficiency of competition law events, see below some other very interesting events that will take place in the course of next month:

-On 4 October Queen Mary University will be holding a conference on “Cross-border challenges in competition enforcement in innovative markets” in London. The aim is to showcase areas of convergence and divergence in competition enforcement, in markets where innovation plays an essential role. The conference will present different perspectives from EU, US as well as China. More information is available here.

-On 13-14 October the UniSA School of Law will hold the 15^th edition of its Competition Law and Economics Workshop (CLEC) in Adelaide, Australia, with the participation of Nicolas Petit. The programme is available here. The workshop will be held in partnership with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (“ACCC”). Click here for further info.

-On 18 October antitrustitalia will host its 40th lunch talk at the auditorium of DG Comp in the Madou Tower. Chief Economist Tommaso Valletti will deliver a presentation assessing the role of the Chief Economist and clarifying the methodological issues of economics and econometrics that can be crucial in determining which competition law enforcement to pursue, if any. It will offer a survey of previous cases where the economic analysis “made a difference” as well as other cases where the economic defences put forward by the parties were “out of focus”. For more info, click here.

-On 20 October the GCLC and UCL will be holding a joint event in London on “Transformations of Competition Law” with a superb list of speakers. More info is available here.

-On 26 October our friends at ERA will host a workshop on “Anticompetitive Practices in the Online World: Hot Issues”. It will also be streamed live. You can access the program and register via this link.

-On 25 October, unfortunately on the same day as our conference, GCR, Baker Botts and E.CA will hold a seminar on innovation, IP and antitrust. More info is available here.

[The global Human Rights Logo, above, was created by Predrag Stakić from Serbia]

Some in the EU claim that EU Courts are permissive of the alleged flaws of the institutional/procedural system for the enforcement of the competition rules. The prosecutor-and-judge debate is one of the most longstanding in contemporary competition law. Whereas the Menarini Judgment from the European Court of Human Rights seemed to indirectly endorse the EU system, some continue to question whether the ECHR’s requirements are complied with by a system where the Courts do not always exercise “full review”. In anticipation of possible future challenges, you will in fact have noted that, following Menarini, the expression “marginal review” has disappeared from EU competition law Judgments. The extent to which there was a problem, or to which there may have been a change, in this regard is further discussed here.

Now, what happens when the EU mode is exported to/imported by other jurisdictions with allegedly different checks and balances? Well, here’s a story that is currently making the headlines in the Balkans and that has triggered some unprecedented developments, including a common constitutional challenge on the part of the national Bar, Human Rights Organizations and criminal law academics, public accusations on the part of the competition authority against individual lawyers, alleged breaches of private correspondence and other black-novel-like developments. Who said competition law couldn’t be adventurous…

A quick recap follows:

Read the rest of this entry »

The best, and quickest, Intel comment by the most preeminent academic of his generation –who also happens to be my co-blogger- already contains the keys to understand and make sense out of the very essence of today’s CJEU (Grand Chamber) Judgment in Intel (see the preceding post). In what follows I add my two cents on another set of issues raised by the Judgment. Read the rest of this entry »

Although with a bit of a delay, here are some events organized by friend of this blog in the coming weeks and that might be of your interest:

On 8 September the 11th Junior Competition Conference will take place at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London. This is an event organized by the editors of the Competition Law Journal and that we have always supported. For details on how to register, click here.

On 15 September the University of  Leeds will be hosting a conference titled Competition Law in a Global Context: Analysing the Trans-Atlantic Divide with a very promising program. The conference will be preceded by Pinar Akman’s inaugural the day before (see here).

On 25 September LeadershIP will put together a conference in Brussels to discuss  recent international developments having to do with IP issues. More information is available here.

Our next and third annual Chillin’Competition conference will be taking place on Wednesday 25 October 2017.  We have confirmed the date with a surprise guest (we cannot tell you more, but just a hint: she is Danish and, among other things, knits elephants).

We want to make this a uniquely interesting, fun, relaxed and disruptive conference, and we are already thinking about new formats and ideas, so:

–If you’d like to help us sending ideas or proposals our way (on new formats, themes, etc), please do so!  A good idea will get you a guaranteed seat…

–If you’d like to attend, save the date! At the beginning of September we will publish a tentative programme as well as information on how to register. Remember that last year all seats were gone in 6 minutes (if you think that was fast you should have seen some of the attendees at the open bar after the conference…).

-If you’d like to sponsor it, drop us a line. 

As you know, yesterday we held our workshop on EU Courts and Competition Law: Myths, Gaps and Challenges.

Our speakers were, as expected, absolutely fantastic and we were able to have the sort of interesting debates that we were aiming for. We are immensely grateful both to the main speakers as well as to the attendees.

A selection of photos from the workshop is available here.

The book by Fernando and Eric received unanimous praise; if you still don´t have it, that can be fixed by clicking here.

By the way, the proof that there is no protocol for book endorsements is available here…

Pastries from my family’s bakery were also a success, also as expected. Since I am on advertising mood, and for the sake of fostering online commerce, you can buy them here  😉  If Chillin’Competition is dominant I guess we just got in trouble…

Please find below the final programme for our forthcoming workshop next Monday.  Each speaker will discuss a specific topic for 5 minutes. We will then have 20-25 minutes per round to engage in a discussion with all attendees. We are very much looking forward to it!

Remember that it will take place at the Fondation Universitaire, Rue D’ Egmont 11, Brussels, from 15.00 to 19.00 h. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKSHOP- Alfonso Lamadrid

PRESENTATION OF Evidence, Proof and Judicial Review in EU Competition Law-  Advocate General Nils Wahl

FIRST ROUND (moderated by Pablo Ibañez Colomo)

• Alfonso Lamadrid: “Of facts and law: what is the role of the Courts in competition cases?”
• Denis Waelbroeck: “Margin of appraisal and Article 7 ECHR”
• Trevor Soames: “Will the deference previously given by the General Court to the EU Commission’s decisions where its reasoning could be labelled as comprising matters of complex economic assessment post Menarini, KME and Chalkor be rolled back?”
• Jean-François Bellis: “Why do so many defendants choose to settle rather than appeal?”

SECOND ROUND (moderated by Fernando Castilllo)

• José Luis Buendía: “Burden of proof and State aid litigation: from Myth to Logos”
• Eric Gippini Fournier: “It’s the dominance, stupid!…and some other thoughts”
• Pinar Akman: “The Objectives of Article 102 TFEU and the case law”.

COFFEE AND REINOSA BREAK (you will understand once you are there…)

THIRD ROUND (moderated by Eric Gippini)

• Sir Nicholas Forwood: “Do the procedure and case handling practices of the GC need review if they are to provide effective “full review” in complex competition cases?”
• Nicholas Khan: “Confidentiality in the context of litigation before the EU Courts”
• Fernando Castillo: “Over the past 20 years, no witnesses have been called to testify in a competition case. Is the Galp judgment a game-changer?”
• Pablo Ibáñez Colomo: “What is effective judicial review?”

FOURTH ROUND (moderated by Alsonso Lamadrid)

• GC Judge Krystyna Kowalik-Bańczyk: “The scope of reforming powers of the General Court as far as sanctions are concerned”
• Thomas Graf: “Could the Courts do more to develop the coherence and predictability of competition rules?”
• Anne-Lise Sibony: “The prospects for behavioural antitrust in the EU, with a focus on litigation”
• Advocate General Nils Wahl: “Why I don’t like Ctrl+C”