Laurence Idot

In 2021, the European Court of Justice handed down an important judgment on private enforcement in Europe. It held that a claimant for damages in a cartel action can sue the subsidiary of the offender. In reaching this conclusion, the Court relied on the concept of undertaking, as developed by (...)

This section selects books on themes related to competition laws and economics. This compilation does not attempt to be exhaustive but rather a survey of themes important in the area. The survey usually covers publication over the last three months after publication of the latest issue of (...)

The proposed acquisition of Grail by Illumina has attracted attention from the outset as it is the first application of the new interpretation of Article 22 of the Regulation which allows for the referral to the Commission of transactions below the thresholds provided for by national merger (...)

The integration of public interest considerations is not only desirable, but possible because of the permeability of the competition rules to the reception of well-being by the competitive parameters of quality, choice and innovation in addition to that of price. The scope for progress depends (...)

This set of articles is dedicated to the changes made to the French competition law by the DDADUE bill of December 3, 2020. Both the law on restrictive competition practices and the law on anti-competitive practices are affected by the necessary transposition of EU directives (directives (...)

The effects of the United Kingdom’s exit on competition policy had already been dealt with in the withdrawal agreement which entered into force on 1 February 2020, in particular in Articles 92 to 95. These provisions only applied until the end of the transitional period, i.e. 31 December 2020. (...)

The European Competition Network (ECN), which is well-known as an effective mechanism of cooperation for the application of articles 101 and 102 TFEU, is not extended to merger rules. However, the need for cooperation in this area encouraged the Commission and the national competition (...)

Article published in Liber amicorum in honor of Claude Lucas de Leyssac, LexisNexis, 2018. The author is speaking in a purely personal capacity. 1. Political law, competition law lends itself to controversy. While, in the context of the substantial modernisation of European antitrust law (...)

The present contributions were gathered following up the 10th edition of the “New Frontiers of Antitrust” annual Concurrences review Conference held in Paris on June 14th, 2019, at the French Ministry of Economy and Finance. The discussions revolved around four topics. The members of the first (...)

The Unfair Commercial Practices in the Food Supply Chain Directive Emilie Prouzet European Public Affairs Director, Federation of Commerce and Distribution, Brussels 1. In thirty years, European agriculture has experienced numerous crises, the intensity of which has particularly increased (...)

Three years after the introduction of the settlement procedure into the tools available to the Competition Authority, the Authority was able to witness the success and the very strong development of this procedure, with companies increasingly soliciting its application. Before the adoption of (...)

During the Nasse Seminar organized the 2nd of July of 2013, Laurence Idot, Patrick Rey talked about the new commercial behaviours in online sales field. The seminar was animed by Emmanuel Combe, vice president of the Competition authority. Introduction by Emmanuel Combe In 2011, (...)

The notion of single infringement, mentioned for the first time in the so-called propylene case and initially defined by the Commission to apprehend the cartels and go beyond legal categories of agreement, is from now on used for the application of Article 102 TFEU. This notion enables (...)

After an alignment of French rules to European rules, the two sets of rules have evolved differently from one another. The topic is once again at the forefront, following the first Google case, but even more following the ECN+ submission, which stipulates that all NCA must be provided with (...)

Independence and transparency go hand by hand and are of the utmost importance for competition authorities. Transparency is a safeguard for independence. Competition authorities must be independent by definition regarding both the public and the private sector. Total independence should be (...)

The evidence of anti-competitive practices has been subject to fundamental changes over the last thirty years. The burden of proof on competition authorities is increasingly heavy and varied but, at the same time, the techniques for reducing this burden have become more diversified. The (...)

It was questionable whether this important judgment would close the debate on the interpretation of Article 102 TFEU. Will it put an end to the controversial and even polemical topics related to the interpretation of Article 102 TFEU and in particular to the debate on the effects-based (...)

The disclosure provisions of the EU Damages Directive allow national courts to order competition authorities to disclose certain documents and information in damages proceedings. In addition, private parties can also be ordered to disclose certain evidence that they have obtained through (...)

The majority of Member States have implemented the European Directive on Private Damages Actions for Breach of Competition Law, into their respective law, albeit with some delay. In particular, England, Germany, and the Netherlands, but also France and Italy have faced a certain number of (...)

Article 5 of the Damages Directive requires Member States to enable courts to order disclosure of evidence under certain qualifying conditions, while protecting the rights of parties and third parties, in particular confidential information. This is an area in which common law jurisdictions (...)

By importing all the defects of Title IV on the law of restrictive practices into the Title II of Book IV of the French Commercial Code, the legislator infringes the coherence of the law of anticompetitive practices. Although it is necessary to oversee certain sectors, it is not in Title II of (...)

Directive 2014/104, i.e. the ’Damages Directive’, is currently being transposed into national law. The aim of this directive is admittedly not to solve the issues of private international law arising from actions for damages; however, its provisions will likely increase these issues in the (...)

Case 1 was dedicated to the practices of search engines in the scope of Chinese, American and European laws. An economist has also shared his point of view on the matter. 1. Rant is a particularly efficient search engine, present in all countries of the world. In the search engine (...)

The panel is devoted to the issue of the geographical scope of competition laws, mainly antitrust law in the public enforcement context. According to the principles of international law, the territoriality principle shall be respected both to determine the jurisdiction to prescribe and the (...)

In spite of numerous studies on the development of private enforcement in Europe, the international dimension of collective actions has been neglected. This article studies the present situation in European international private law. Whatever the topic (introduction of the action, recognition (...)

The conference that took place in Singapore on the 23rd of April 2015 dealt with the future of competition law and policy in the ASEAN countries. The speakers of this panel mainly discuss three topics: the economic context of mergers in Indonesia and Singapore; convergence and differences on (...)

According to the Commission’s report for the 10th anniversary of Regulation 1/2003, “there is a need for further convergence on the ability of the authorities to set priorities in the exercise of their tasks”. The position of the author, based upon the French experience, is more nuanced. (...)

The ’economisation’ of competition law has been a reality for more than twenty years. This roundtable’s objective was not to call into question the need for economic analysis in competition law, but to debate the (often practical) problems raised by intervention of economists, mostly when (...)

Interview conducted by Laurence Idot, Professor, University Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), Member, College of the French Competition Authority, Paris. L.I.: Could you retrace your entire career, since most of our readers knew you after 1986 as a lawyer, a professor, or even President of the (...)

Recent affairs have illustrated that merger control and foreign investment control may be applied to the same operation. A comparison of both their scope and their legal regime demonstrates that the coexistence of these controls is necessary. However, it seems that within the European Union, (...)

The distinction between public law and private law is overestimated in France. In this presentation made to introduce a colloquium on the public aspects of competition law, the author argues that the distinction has no real use in competition law. 1. This theme, which may seem somewhat (...)

In September 2004, Concurrenceswas a project. Ten years later, in September 2014, Concurrencesis still a project, but a project in constant evolution. On the occasion of the 10 years, the founders’ wish was not so much to celebrate an anniversary, an overly narcissistic exercise, but to look (...)

Launched on 8 May 2012, the State Aid Modernization (SAM), which was sought by Commissioner Almunia and will mark his mandate, has almost been completed. Many texts, including the new GBER were adopted at the beginning of the summer. Only one notice on the concept of state aid is still (...)

Two themes were covered in the roundtable. The principle of ne bis in idem concerns the interplay between different procedures of sanctions of a public nature. The interplay between public and private enforcement has been considered in the draft damages directive and in the French case-law, (...)

Most of present damages action following Commission’s prohibition decisions of cartels have an international dimension. It raises the preliminary and essential issues of applicable law and choice of a national court. As these issues are not dealt with in the directive, it is necessary, in (...)

This first roundtable of the conference “New frontiers of Antitrust”, Paris, 21 February 2014, was dedicated to the detection of anticompetitive practices. Although competition authorities are provided with significant investigative resources, the discussions goes on about the need to dispose (...)

Conclusion Synthesis Report 1. It is now time to conclude this day and I would first of all like to thank Anne-Sophie Choné-Grimaldi for entrusting me with this always difficult task, all the more so as I am in a doubly delicate situation. Not only do I have to conclude after a (...)

This article brings together 3 contributions from the conference "A new vision of the economic regulation" held in Paris the 24th September 2013 and organized by the French competition Authority and the French Council of State. The whole of conference contributions is under publication at the (...)

Once Regulation n° 1/2003 was adopted, unlike in most other Member States, no major reform occurred in France. No change in the substantive rules was needed, as French antitrust rules were already very similar to articles 81 and 82 EC. As far as public enforcement was concerned, both (...)

This set of three papers is derived from the Philippe Nasse’s seminar on the new practices in the e-commerce that was held on July 2, 2013 in Paris. The e-commerce has grown very rapidly these past few years and contributes to the competitive animation of the distribution sector by showing (...)

The need to ensure consistency between public enforcement and private enforcement of antitrust law is of particular interest within the European Competition Network. The possibility of using the files of Competition Authorities in follow-on damages actions is presently a key issue in this (...)

This third roundtable of the conference “New frontiers of Antitrust” (Paris, 22th of February 2013) was dedicated to "Private Enforcement, the wave does come from Brussels, London, Paris or elsewhere? ". In the first contribution, Laurence Idot, professor at the Paris II University, provides (...)

THE GLOBAL COMPETITION LAW CONFERENCE SESSION II : National and transnational Dynamics : The Interplay China’s Competition Law in the Global Competition Xiaoye WANG Professor, Hunan University and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and consultant expert, Chinese Antimonopoly Commission (...)

The so-called Social Economy, including cooperatives, mutual societies, non-profit associations, foundations and social enterprises, provides a wide range of products and services across Europe and generates millions of jobs. In France, it represents 10 % of GDP. It is sometimes presented as (...)

Convergence of antitrust laws has become a reality. This article provides a general view on this phenomenom both within the European Union and worldwide. Within the European Union, a paradoxical situation has arisen since, in spite of the “one stop shop system”, convergence is stronger in (...)

Unlike the position adopted by some specialists in environmental law, the author asserts that the Lisbon Treaty does not change the interplay between competition law and environmental law. Based on the latest developments, the article aims at showing that the control of enterprises by the (...)

The increasing development of soft law in competition law can be observed in every component (antitrust, merger control…) and within the whole European Union. The consequences of such a phenomenom shall be analysed both upstream on the process of creation of the rule, but also downstream, (...)

This second roundtable of the conference “New frontiers of Antitrust”, Paris, 10 February 2012, was dedicated to procedural autonomy with regards to competition law enforcement. After a short introduction by Guy Canivet, member of the French Constitutional Council, Éric Barbier de la Serre, (...)

This paper was presented at the University of Nice in the framework of a colloquium in the honor of Professor A. Pirovano. It studies the different uses of the concept of “undertaking” or “entrerpirse” in the different components of EU competition law with references to French law. 1. While (...)

Parental liability within a group of companies is the major topic discussed before the Court of Justice in 2011. This article, which is based on a presentation made for a colloquium organised by specialists of criminal law, draws the conclusions of the recent case law on two points: (...)

This set of articles explores the case of breach of commitments in competition proceedings. Recent cases, in France and abroad, have highlited issues that commitments monitoring may cause. Thierry Dahan and Christophe Lemaire express here the lawyers general point of view in antitrust law, (...)

This third roundtable of the conference "New frontiers of Antitrust", Paris, 11 February 2011, was dedicated to the role of consumers associations in competition proceedings. According to William E. Kovacic, Commissioner at the US Federal Trade Commission, competition and consumer protection (...)

This text is the written version of a presentation limited to the competition policy made at the Paris colloquium of November 2010 on the "Energy Policy of the European Union". The purpose of the article is to study the action of the Commission and NCA, including the opening to competition in (...)

This article reproduces the opening papers delivered at the AFEC conference on contractual practices and competition law in Paris on October 25, 2010. According to the Professor Chagny, the examination of the links between contractual practices and competition law lato sensu reveals (...)

Many recent cases, such as the Lafarge case in Europe or, in France, the Orange Caraïbe case, have shown how important is the question of repeated infringements when defining the amount of the fine in antitrust cases. Nevertheless, legal treatment of repeated infringements is still quite (...)

David, this is the first time that Concurrences interviews an academic. You are professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law; could you tell us more about yourself? i. What are the key dates of your academic career? Are you a “pure academic” or did you have commitments with law firms or (...)

Competition authorities have recently discovered arbitration. OCDE’s Competition Policy Committee orgnanized in October 2010 a session on this topic. Arbitration may be used in two different contexts. In the field of private enforcement, arbitral tribunals may have the same role as ordinary (...)

This paper summarises the practice of the French Competition Authority (FCA) at the end of 2010 in the field of vertical restrictions. In the field of distribution, broadly speaking, the French practice follows of course the EU rules. However, as many cases are treated at the national level, (...)

In this presentation made for the XVIII th ICF St Gallen Conference in the roundtable on "Due process and the art of fining", the author examines the French system. Unlike the European Commission, there is a clear cut within the French Competition Authority between the Investigation Services (...)

Sanctions: Is more always better? Introduction Laurence IDOT Professeur à l’Université Paris II-Panthéon Assas Présidente du comité scientifique de Concurrences 1. Après les enquêtes et le rôle de l’économie comportementale dans l’appréciation des comportements, voici venu le temps des (...)

An exhaustif state of play on the Regulation n°1/2003 can not be drawn in the limited scope of this study, for that reason we will limit ourselves to the French situation. A first step of this study will necessarily be the technical aspect of the enforcement . A second aspect of this study is (...)

State aid policy, a specificity of European Union law, is at the heart of the current financial and economic crisis. Although such an evolution could not have been foreseen, the review of this policy, in the context of the Lisbon strategy, has been at the heart of the EU Competition Policy (...)

Introductory remarks Laurence Idot Professor, Universtité Paris II, European College Director of the Scientific Committee of Concurrences 1. Mr President of the Commercial Court, Ladies and Gentlemen. Today is a first, and I am pleased about it. It is indeed the first time that an (...)

Recent case law from the Court of justice of the European Communities has casted doubts on the interpretation of the notion of anticompetitive object, in stern contrast with economic analysis which lead to greater attention given to the effect of anticompetitive practices. It is understood (...)

Introductory remarks Laurence Idot Professor, Universtité Paris II, European College Director of the Scientific Committee of Concurrences Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends, As the afternoon is busy, I will not go into the substance of the colloquium, but on behalf (...)

Since its creation in 2004, the journal Concurrences has been organizing a colloquium. The topics covered have naturally been varied: from the adaptation of the French system to Regulation 1/2003 to the place of competition in the Treaty of Lisbon, through banking and finance issues and the (...)

Whereas in the enforcement system of Articles 81 and 82 EC resulting from Regulation No 17/62, it was usual to distinguish between the application of these texts, on the one hand, by the Commission and, on the other hand, by the national authorities and courts, which led to a preference for a (...)

Recent case law of the European Courts, the recent guidelines of the European Commission on non-horizontal mergers, the decisional practice of the European Commission as well as that of various national competition authorities and courts seem to focus on the possible anticompetitive (...)

Is there a contradiction between the desire to "mobilise competition as a new lever for growth", which appears in the title of Title II of the law on the modernisation of the economy, known as the LME law, and the series of measures adopted in recent weeks, both in the European Union and (...)

Presentation Laurence Idot Professor, Universtité Paris II, European College Director of the Scientific Committee of Concurrences 1. It is in my capacity as head of the journalConcurrences’s scientific committee that I was asked to make this morning’s presentation. I confess that I (...)

At the beginning of 2007, the magazine Concurrences published the cross interviews of the two main candidates in the French presidential election. Ms. Ségolène Royal and Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to contribute to the debate by answering a series of questions on national and Community (...)

1. As the law on anti-competitive practices has been applied within the European Competition Network since 1 May 2004 as a result of Regulation 1/2003 on the implementation of Articles 81 and 82 EC1 , the situation in the other Member States had to be examined. However, the title of the (...)

1. The title of this communication calls for some introductory remarks. The expression "public procurement" was preferred to the more former "public procurement". This expression tends to impose itself in legal terminology French in that it allows for the reporting of the evolution of public (...)

Laurence Idot. Commissioner, Secretary of State, ladies and gentlemen and, if I may, dear friends, I have the great honour, but above all the great pleasure, to open this morning on behalf of the magazine Concurrencesthis half-day devoted to the place of competition in the new Treaty . I (...)

In the initial programme, Frédéric Jenny was expected to draw conclusions from this morning. As you can see, we have switched the roles, with Frédéric Jenny as the introductory speaker*. Undeniably, I lost in the exchange, as it is particularly difficult to sum up such a rich morning and I (...)

The “procedural autonomy principle” leads to the application of national laws to Investigation powers of National Competition Authorities. The purpose of the article is to examine the consequences of the entry into force of the Regulation 1/2003. In the vertical relation (EU law/national law), (...)

This article appears only in pdf version, attached.

* This article by Professor Laurence Idot concludes the "Banking, Finance and Competition" symposium organized by the Concurrences Review and the RTDF Journal that was held on the 30th November 2006 in Paris. The oral style has been kept in this brief conclusion. 1. It’s an advantage to come (...)

EC Regulation n° 1/2003 increased the role of arbitrators, ordinary law judges of competition, in the same way than states judges. The meeting between arbitration and competition law nonetheless arises some particular issues due to a natural antagonism between the public order character of (...)

Published in the Liber Amicorum in honor of the Advocate General Léger, this study focuses on the state of the access to file following the modernisation and the Commission’s notice of 2005 1. For companies and their counsel, access to the file remains one of the most difficult procedural (...)

The purpose of this paper is to study the reception of concepts and principles of criminal law, like the non bis in idem principle and recidivism, in EU and French antitrust law. Antitrust authorities and courts are reluctant towards the non bis in idem principle, which could prevent an (...)

The proceedings of this colloquium are organised in two parts. In the first stage, the two main axes of the reform are studied: In substantive terms, the aim of the Community reform is to introduce a more economic analysis of aid in this area too. Following the presentation made by Ms Rabassa (...)

Leniency programs are now a well established and efficient policies through Europe, both at the EU level and at the national levels. In this sery of 5 articles, EU and national policy officers, academics and practionners give various points of view on the use of lenieny programs in the EU (...)

Laurence IDOT, Professor at the University of Paris I-Panthéon/Sorbonne The examination of tying and bundling practices has been the subject of a particularly abundant economic literature for several years, but the Microsoft and GE/Honeywell cases have revived the debate. These decisions (...)

Concurrences is a workshop, a projects center dedicated to competition laws. In Europe competition law is not only part of Community law, but part of the 25 EU Member States national body of laws as well. It also reaches beyond European Economic Area. It is therefore no coincidence if a few (...)