This weekend we were sending out invitations to the next guests of The Friday Slot, and at one one point the issue of how many readers Chillin’Competition has came up. We checked our stats with a bit more detail than we normally do, and we were amazed at what we saw:

In almost every month of its existence (leaving aside the summer holidays and Christmas) Chillin’Competition has set new readership records.

Last week was important, because it was the first time that we consolidated the figure of 1,000 daily readers. Last week, people from 83 different countries (!) read 182 different posts. Belgium, with 1282, was the country of origin of most of these visits, followed by the UK, the U.S., Spain, France, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy.

Below is the map that wordpress shows us:

In February 2010 we recall thinking that maybe we had hit our ceiling (that month we had 4,993 readers). But in February 2011 we had 10,873; and then in February 2012 we had 14.994…

Throughout its history, Chillin’Competition has had 239,908 readers. Its LinkedIN group has 524 members, and more than 260 other people are directly suscribed to through our homepage.

We are thrilled.

Thank you!!

//tr8

Or my first try at using Internet slang for antitrust issues…

BTW, I have to participate to a conference on the pharmaceutical sector in 10 days, and I welcome any fresh intel on //tr8, as well as on any other hot, burning issue relevant to the sector.

Given the industry’s taste for secrecy, you may write to me directly at Nicolas.petit@ulg.ac.be

I can’t help but reading a good definition of “anticompetitive foreclosure” in this Adam Smith’s quote:

“To widen the market [NP’s note: through leveraging], and to narrow the competition [NP’s note: through exclusionary tactics]  must always be against [the public], and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens”.

Source: (1776) The Wealth of Nations, Book I Part III § 10.

In her great fiction Anthem, Ayn Rand describes a word where humans cannot use the word “I” on pain of being sentenced to atrocities. This is part of a greater effort of the dictatorship to suppress the concept of individuality.

To some extent, EU competition law shares analogy with Rand’s novell. It is sometimes as if Commission officials were forbidden by the EU Courts’ case-law to use the language of economics. This could be allegedly part of a larger plan to undermine the relevance of economic concepts.

An example: in 2008, a Lithuanian Court asked the Commission whether the proof that an information exchange agreement infringed Article 101 TFEU was conditional on evidence that the market structure was “oligopolistic“. In accordance with Article 15(1) of Regulation 1/2003, the Commission released its opinion.

In an ideal world, where economic reasoning would freely inform legal interpretation, the answer would be a resounding yes.

Yet, according to the Commission, the case-law of the EU Courts does not explicitly request the proof of an “oligopolistic” market structure for a finding of an unlawful information exchange agreement. Given this, and in stark contradiction with modern economic theory, the Commission denies that “oligopoly” is a necessary pre-condition for a restriction of competition to occur in a such setting. Blinded by obedience to murky judicial court-speak, the Commission thus turns its back on a basic economic concept.

This is  even more suprising given that in  the following paragraph, the Commission itself recognizes that the level of concentration and the structure of supply are important features in the analysis.

Very disappointing.

No post last Thursday, Friday and Monday, what happened? Did we try a strike (not at bowling, like on the pic above) to see how a 4 days WE looks like?

Nothing of this kind really: Alfonso and I just got insanely busy. Sorry for this.

Two things nonetheless sprung to mind in the past days:

1. Old (students) habits die hard. At a conference last week, I drove the competition John Turturo mad. I was chatting with my assistants in the back of the room, essentially commenting on speeches. He was working.  He did not like it. Misbehavior from me. Am truly sorry.

2. DG COMP’s webpage on cooperation with national courts contains a wealth of relevant information on Article 15(1) and 15(3) of Regulation 1, i.e.  requests for information or for an opinion + amicus curiae. It is very unfortunate, however, that this webpage is not translated in EU languages other than English. I can see the point of using English as the competition esperanto in Brussels, but when it comes to national courts seeking online information on what they can do, it would help to provide translation.

My ULg students took their oral exam last week. It went fairly well for most of them.

That said, as usual during exams, I heard a bunch of puzzling things. In response to a question on alternatives to fines for competition infringements, I got the following answers:

• Dissolution of the infringing company  (or the “slayer” remedy) =>think of the consequences in industry-wide cartels;
• Bringing the infringing company under Commission control (or the “bureaucratic” remedy) => science fiction or just augmented reality?
• Divulge all patents and other trade secrets to other market participants, with the particular illustration of Coca-Cola abusing a dominant position (or the “an eye for an eye” remedy) => you steal market share, we steal your IPRs.

I forgot, I also had a very candid answer when I asked what could be done to foster private enforcement =>make justice free and forbid legal professionals from making money out of cases…

PS: I am the culprit. I spent countless hours encouraging them to be creative.

A non competition related post.

Yesterday, Belgium was on strike (and so was lazy Alfonso, who did not post on the blog).

Guess what, this was a Monday. That is the day after Sunday, which itself is the day after Saturday.

Intriguing. I cant help but thinking that strikes are often a far cry from their purpose,  i.e. genuine social protest, and in turn that they are a convenient means to make week-ends longer (or earlier).

The low turnout in the streets yesterday actually confirms this (in particular when the temperature comes close to 0°C).

I made a quick and dirty research on strikes in Belgium over 2011:

• The 4 March general strike took place on…. a Friday
• The 13 May strike in railways took place on … a Friday

I’d be interested to see a more comprehensive body of evidence, but my gut feeling is that there are many other examples.

The next question, obviously,  is, how to handle this? After all, in several Member States the freedom to strike is  protected by the law.

My take: maintain the freedom to strike, but prohibit 1-day strikes on Fridays and Mondays.