EC Competition Law and Market Integration
This paper will discuss the broad policy of competition law within the European Community. Specifically, the paper will examine the development of competition law in light of the objective of constructing an integrated market within the Community. This objective apparently outweighs all others in EC competition law. In other jurisdictions, the overriding concerns have been economic efficiency and fairness. The European Community, while recognizing these concerns as important, has made a conscious decision to subordinate them to economic integration. As a result, decisions of the European Commission and the European Court of Justice differ from competition and antitrust case law in other countries, especially the United States.
The paper will concentrate upon the analysis of Article 85, regarding agreements to restrict or distort competition. In particular, the conflict between market integration and other issues of competition stands out when vertical agreements restricting competition are analyzed. Lesser attention will be paid to the problems of abuse of dominant positions and mergers. This paper will attempt to show how European Community law on competition differs in its analysis from the competition and antitrust law of other countries, especially how the European Court of Justice has redefined the notion of "competition" to include considerations of common market integration.
The European Community and Competition
EC competition law roughly includes the areas of unfair trade practices, monopolies, and mergers. Although the policy of market integration encompasses all of these areas, it is most important, and controversial, in the realm of unfair trade practices, especially agreements not to compete between business entities. As will be seen, EC law concerning these agreements differs considerably from that of the United States. EC law is much stricter and more in...