EC Competition Law and Market Integration Introdu

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.

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manufacturers; it only designates one distributor as having the right to sell the manufacturer's products in that particular market. This type of agreement can even promote competition by establishing links between the supplier and distributor in a new market. This sort of agreement is commonly known as a vertical agreement. A horizontal agreement is one which acts to prevent competition from other brands of products. These agreements usually eliminate competition between traders at the same level of the product supply chain, whereby a single or a very few traders become the sole distributors for all brands of a certain type of product. Such agreements are viewed as severely affecting the free operation of the market since consumers at that level are forced to deal with a small group of distributors and are forced to pay a price which does not reflect the effects of competition. The main distinction between the competition laws of a single country and those of a supranational organization, such the European Community, is that the supranational organization must ensure that its market integrates those of the individual member states. While a single state system of law need only deal with the competition inside of its bor

Category: Economics - E