Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Christmas miscellanea
We will be closing the shop for a few days, but there are a few things that we would like to tell you first:
– Our personal Christmas wishlists appear in a special issue from Competition Policy International. They´ve done a great job with editing our pictures (“thanks” to all those of you who have written to say that I need to change the one I use for these things), and we´re grateful for having been placed in such good company. I´m also grateful for the opportunity to do some free advertising of my family´s bakery: thanks to this they will now start seeing some usefulness to my job! Nicolas also profited from this occassion to make it (more) evident that he´s a competition law freak geek.
– Nicolas and I had some pre-holiday drinks last night together with some good friends. Not only all of us were competition lawyers, but the place we went to was also packed with competition lawyers from a well-known firm. We´ll keep the name of the firm confidential, but we can give you a hint: what do you see in the second row of the image below? 😉
– Many other lawyers in Brussels and elsewhere are also getting some last-minute Christmas gifts. Our thoughts will be with all those who, like our friend David Henry, will have to be stuck at the office with a merger filing…
– The Spanish CNC also received a Christmas gift the day before yesterday, when the names of the members of the new Spanish government were made public. The new minister for the economy is Luis de Guindos, who was the Secretary General for Competition between 1996 and 2002. The CNC is certainly poised to play an important role in the coming years as Spain makes an effor to boost competitiveness. (By the way, the CNC has joined the list of national competition authorities resorting to animated cartoons to explain their job and the benefits of competition. Check it out here).
– A reminder of some events coming up right after the holidays: Nicolas will be opening the new edition of the IEB´s Competition Law Course in Madrid on 13 January (we´ll profit from our visit to Madrid to plot a couple of interesting projects on which we´ll report right after the holidays). The BSC will also be holding a very interesting conference on “Costs in Competition Law” on 25 January.
– A light piece of Christmas reading: Freedom to Trade and the Competitive Process by A. Edlin and J. Farrell. This short article is perhaps the most insightful paper I´ve read in a long time. It´s cool to see two top-notch U.S. economists saying sensible stuff that in Europe would be received with the worst of all insults: Ordoliberal!
– Finally, we want to thank whoever had the idea of improving the search tool in the webpage of the European Court of Justice. You made our lives easier.
– To be frank, there were more issues on which I was planning to comment, but I need to run to the airport…Merry Christmas to all and our best wishes for 2012!!
P.S. We leave you with the image of the European Union´s Christmas tree:
Best Conference in Early 2012 – Costs in Competition Law
With the dissemination of the “more economic” approach in all areas of EU competition law, costs have become a key concept in antitrust proceedings. But to most lawyers and in-house counsels, the very notion(s) of costs remains cryptic.
Against this background, the Brussels School of Competition (BSC) has decided to organize on 25 January in Brussels a half-day compliance seminar entitled “Costs in Competition Law”.
In line with the interdisciplinary spirit of the BSC, this event attempts to “blend” competition law and economics. Under each selected topic (see link to the agenda below), it thus brings together a team of one lawyer and one economist, who will seek to provide an integrated perspective on the issue.
This event is a joint initiative of the BSC and of the Institute for European Legal Studies (IEJE) of the University of Liege (ULg). I owe a big, huge, enormous thank you to Elise Provost, for her great assistance in the organisation of this event.
Costs in competition law – Compliance Seminar – 25012012 – Programme
A registration form can be found here.
An algorithm for competition law conferences
Last week was a very weird one. I spent almost as much time at competition law conferences than at the office. Here is a brief account of how the week went and of the thoughts that this conference overdose triggered:
As I have already mentioned on this blog, on Tuesday I participated at a workshop entitled “What is happening to Article 101 TFEU?” organized by Giorgio Monti at the European University Institute in Fiesole (as you know, Prof. Monti´s idea to hold this workshop was “inspired” by some discussions on this blog). The presentations by Giorgio Monti, Saskia King, Eric Gippini and Luis Ortiz and the discussion we had were all extremely interesting. I was overwhelmed by how smart (an genuinely nice and funny) the group was both during the workshop and outside of it. We tried to make sense out of the object/effect dichotomy and talked at length about what really is a restriction of competition as well as about the “deaths” of restrictions by effect and of Article 101(3). It´s a pity that only a small group could attend. On the plane back to Brussels, Eric, Luis and I mentioned that perhaps we could try to write a brief piece with our “non-mainstream” ideas some time soon. I´ll make sure that they don´t forget about it.
On Wednesday Charles River Associates (CRA) held its annual conference in Brussels. I attended most of the morning sessions and I have to say that the event was a great success. As excellent economists, these guys are conscious of the power of “FREE”. They deserve recognition for holding a free very high quality conference in Brussels.
Then on Thursday there was a lunch talk at the GCLC on the Menarini Judgment. I couldn´t attend, but all I hear is that the speakers were truly brilliant.
The reason I couldn´t attend the GCLC event is that at the same time I was speaking at yet another conference: the International Symposium on Competition Policy organized by the Centre for Parliamentary Studies. I was invited to this event following a recommendation from Nicolas (I really owe you one here, mate -please note the irony-). I was supposed to deliver the final keynote speech on “The future of EU Competition Policy“. I had prepared what I thought to be a fairly original and humorous prediction of what I think will certainly happen in the short term, of what should happen in the medium tem, and of what will inevitably happen in the long term. I´m not very sure that my messages will have the impact I´d hoped for: the audience was composed by two people from the Namibian competition authority, two members of the Malaysian competition Commission, a member of the Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs, a Scot from the Water Industry Commission, and my colleague Napoleón Ruiz who threatened me with taking pictures. Jokes aside, it was fun.
So many hours of sitting at these and other recent events made one thoughts spring to mind: I wouldn´t need the expertise of my friends at CRA to come up with an ad hoc algorithm or formula with which to predict how interesting a competition law conference is supposed to be. The general rule (subject, of course, to exceptions) is easy: the likelihood of getting to listen to new and interesting stuff is inversely proportional to the combination of three cumulative variables: the price of the event, the number of attendees, and the number and lenght of slide decks. It´s generally not a good sign if an event is pricy and crowded. The ones with a greater chance of not being interesting at all are those for which you have to pay in order to be a spayeaker (yes, there are plenty of those!). (Not that so many people care anyway, since some of these events are mainly about networking, a.k.a “free” drinks and nibbles + some gossiping).
That´s why the 1st Chillin´Competition Conference should also be free. We only have to figure out minor details, such us how to pay for it.. Here are some options: Voluntary contributions? Sponsoring? A lottery for a date with Nicolas?
Ideas welcome…
Random News
Oops, the General Court did it again… Last week in EFIM v. Commission, the Court confirmed the Laurent Piau case-law: a collective dominant position under Article 102 TFEU covers situations of tacit collusion (here labelled, “tacit coordination“) and hinges on proof of (i) detection opportunities; (ii) retaliation mechanisms; and (iii) absence of countervailing power of actual and potential rivals. Interestingly, the Court made no reference to the notions of “collective entity“, “correlation factors” or “economic links“, used in previous cases. A welcome ruling. Yet, much remains to be done in relation to the concept of abuse of collective dominance.
A great hire by Compass Lexecon: Prof. Jonathan Baker just joined them as Senior Consultant. Prof. Baker has been the Chief Economist of the FCC and the FTC. But to me, J. Baker is one of the first economists who articulated a workable theory of unilateral effects in merger cases. For more, see his article with Timothy F. Bresnahan entitled, ” The Gains from Merger or Collusion in ProductDifferentiated Industries”, 33 J. INDUS. ECON. 427 (1985) and see link here (and in particular footnote 15).
On 12 December, the Brussels School of Competition will host a half-day conference on the proposed reform of Belgian Competition Law. See here for the programme. My assistant Norman Neyrinck and my friend Laurent de Muyter will speak at the conference. I cannot wait to listen to them.
An unconvenient truth: it is technically wrong to say that the default of a Eurozone State would trigger the end of the € as a currency. On this, journalists tend to oversimplify. Unless all failed States opt out of the Eurozone, the € will stay in business. And by the way, a defaulting State does not necessarily need to exit the Eurozone. True though, defaulting States may be tempted to exit so as to engage into competitive devaluation, and regain growth in the mid-term.
Finally, because I love self promotion, and also for my fan club – Alfonso, pls forward this asap to your colleague – a picture of me with a Chinese official who attended a lecture on EU competition law in Brussels 15 days ago.
Do economists do it with models?
Things are busy at work, and I just remembered that I told Nicolas I would take care of posting something today. When such things happen we generally resort to either (a) announcing a conference; or (b) posting a quick joke.
In this case, if I had chosen a) the post would´ve looked too short; but if I´d chosen b) I would be missing an opportunity for self promotion to announce an interesting event. Solution: let´s do both:
(a) Conference announcement: As anticipated last week, Giorgio Monti has put together a most interesting workshop that will be held next Tuesday (6 December) at the European University Institute. The program -which features Giorgio Monti (EUI), Saskia King (LSE), Luis Ortiz Blanco (Garrigues), Eric Gippini-Fournier (European Commission´s Legal Service) and myself- is available here: What is happening to Article 101 TFEU?
(b) Joke of the day: Economists don´t do it with models. The picture above (which I first saw in a ppp by Fréderic Jenny at Fordham last September) stands for the proposition that economists do it with models “because there´s no shortage of demand for the curves that they supply“.
Nonetheless, as you all know, economic theory can be used to defend one thing and its contrary. That is why there´s an alternative economic theory that explains why economists don´t do it with models. If you want to know about it, click here.
Forthcoming Events
A quick post to update our readers on forthcoming events:
- GCLC Evening Policy Talk on 1 December with B. Kovacic (former US FTC Commissioner);
- A set of three BSC seminars on the Law & Econ of Horizontal Cooperation Agreements (incl. recent developments) with M. Bennett (OFT), A. Lofaro (RBB Econ) and S. Völcker (WilmerHale);
- A half day conference on the future of Belgian Competition Law on 12 December (in the framework of the BSC);
- GCLC Lunch Talk on 8 December on the ECtHR Judgment in Menarini Diagnostics v. Italy (with M. Bronckers and C. Bellamy).
11/11
Today is a day off in Belgium and France. A quick post though.
A group of Phd students from University College Dublin is organising a Postgraduate Workshop (in March 2012) on competition law enforcement.
Hereafter the link to the call for papers.
28th Annual AmCham EU Competition Conference
Next Wednesday (November 9), the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union will be holding a most interesting conference in Brussels.
This event may have gone unnoticed for some of you, but we think it´s interesting enough to bring it to your attention (it´s also good way for us to show that we don´t discriminate the links displayed on our blog in favor of our own events…).
The AmCham Conference will feature one panel on the role of EU Courts, one on fining policies, and one on procedural rights. The line up of speakers is also impressive (and includes some friends and readers of this blog). For more details, the program is available here.
Those interested in registering can still do so via this link.
General Interest
A few weeks ago, I have been asked to make conclusive remarks at a conference on “Competition law and the general interest” (BTW, the picture above shows Paris Hilton serving “general interest” works after having been found guilty of unlawful drug possession).
I attach my text below. This is far from ground-breaking, and if anyone has suggestions on how to improve the text, I’ll surely take them on board.
That said, it was the first time I was asked to do this, and it was a lot of fun.
The proceedings of the conference (in French), will soon be published by Larcier.
Droit de la concurrence et intérêt général – Final (03 11 11) NP
Help
Apologies for the self-promotion – it is actually not the purpose of this post – but next week, I have to give a speech on standardization a this conference.
To prepare for the conference, I have read a LOT of stuff including complex books on the ISO, patent law, etc.
Yet, there’s one little piece of information that I am still missing. I heard last week from a secret informant that there is currently a Dupont case in COMP’s pipeline, but I cannot find any trace of it. Any information on this case would be most helpful.
More generally, I welcome any input, remark, comments, sources on standardization. As usual, your help will be acknowledged in the first footnote of my paper.
Chillin'Competition 