Archive for the ‘Antitrust Scholarship’ Category
IEJE Working Paper n°2/2009
In line with many economists and legal observers, this Norman Neyrinck’s paper argues that a radicalization of the policies fighting cartels is justified, through an increase of the incentives to report and disincentives to collude.
First, harsher administrative sanctions are needed to deter cartel formation, both directly and indirectly as this would reduce many of the adverse effects generated by mild leniency programs. In this context, the Commission has obviously demonstrated a certain degree of commitment, with increasingly high fines being imposed on cartel infringers. Yet, there is still some way to go. In this regard, a close examination of the fines imposed in the car glass cartel – which have had a resounding impact on the antitrust community – reveals that the alleged elevation of the Commission’s fines policy is largely overestimated (they are partly the result of aggravating circumstances for repeated offenses).
Second, leniency schemes would be enhanced through the introduction of additional features such as rewards for firms, bounties for individuals and criminal sanctions. If well coordinated, those mechanisms can lead to a significant increase of leniency applications and, in turn, achieve an optimal degree of compliance with competition law.
Download: Granting Incentives, Deterring Collusion: The Leniency Policy (en)
The author is a LLM student in Liège University (www.ieje.net)
IEJE Working Paper 1/2009
The first IEJE working paper provides an asssessment of the Belgian competition regime which entered into force 3 years ago. Hereafter, the abstract :
In 2006, a new Belgian competition law entered into force with a primary objective of modernizing the Belgian competition regime. This task was of serious importance as the previous Law on the Protection of Economic Competition was highly criticized, both at national and international levels, for its infamous inefficiency. In order to assess this new regime, we focus on three aspects of this reform: (i) the elevation of merger threshold that should have, in turn, entice the Belgian Council to focus on the assessment of anticompetitive practices, (ii) the strengthening of the Belgian competition law in regard of anticompetitive practices and (iii) a clarification of the Council and other national regulation authorities’ relationships. After careful analysis of the recent Council case law, it appears to us that, even if progresses are certain, the law do not entirely reach those ambitious goals.
En 2006, la Belgique adoptait un texte destiné à moderniser son droit national de la concurrence. Et la tâche était d’importance alors que les critiques sur l’inefficacité de l’ancienne Loi sur la protection de la concurrence économique fusaient de toutes parts, que ce soit au niveau national ou international. Dans cet article, afin d’évaluer l’efficacité de cette réforme, nous nous concentrons sur l’analyse de trois des principales modifications introduites par cette loi : (i) l’élévation des seuils d’analyse des concentrations afin de permettre au Conseil Belge de contrôler les pratiques anticoncurrentielles en plus grand nombre (ii) un renforcement de la loi belge sur la concurrence par rapport aux contrôles des pratiques anticoncurrentielles et (iii) une clarification des relations entre le Conseil et les autorités sectorielles de régulation. Dans ce cadre, après analyse des décisions rendues par le Conseil depuis la réforme, nous concluons que, si les progrès sont indéniables, les objectifs de la loi n’ont été que partiellement remplis.
Chillin'Competition 