David Spector

In recent publications and decisions, regulators and competition authorities repeatedly expressed their fear that the combination of mobile termination charges and on-net/off-net price discrimination in retail markets might allow a dominant mobile operator to hinder the development of smaller (...)

Historically, economic crises have often been accompanied by anti-competitive reactions, which have on the whole aggravated the situation, at least in the case of the United States at the beginning of the New Deal. This precedent suggests that such a reaction would be an erroneous response to (...)

Cartel econometrics has become a well-developed field of research that can contribute to the efficient implementation of competition policy. Beyond the most traditional type of analysis aiming to quantify the impact of cartels on consumer welfare, other methods have been developed lately. They (...)

During the Seminar organized the 4th of December of 2008, Antoine Winckler and David Spector talked about the economic damages evaluation. The seminar was animed by Anne Perrot, vice-president of the Competition Authority. Created at the end of the 1980s within the Forecasting Department, the (...)

Are the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and EU Competition policy inherently antithetical? Have these two policies been condemned to mutual misunderstanding ever since the entry into force of the Treaty of Rome? For some, the issue is clear: the agriculture industry should not be subject to (...)

Une analyse statistique des décisions rendues par le Conseil de la concurrence entre 1992 et 2000 montre que la politique de la concurrence a eu un impact important sur les entreprises sanctionnées, bien supérieur au dommage directement infligé par les amendes, au demeurant modestes au cours de (...)

TABLE OF CONTENTS OPENING REMARKS Mr Jean-Marc SAUVÉ, Vice-President of the Conseil d’Etat Mr Mario MONTI, Former European Commissioner for Competition, President of the Bocconi University of Milan IS STATE AID CONTROL POLICY A COMPETITION POLICY? Introduction: Mrs Marie-Dominique (...)

While competition authorities often take countervailing buyer power into account when assessing the competitive impact of a merger between sellers, they have so far been more reluctant to consider positively the creation or strengthening of buyer power resulting from a merger. This paper (...)

Les caractéristiques techniques de l’électricité et du gaz, tant du côté de l’offre que de la demande, rendent ces secteurs différents de tous les autres. Du fait des particularités du mode de formation des prix de l’électricité, l’intégration des marchés peut ne pas bénéficier aux consommateurs même si (...)

INTRODUCTORY WORDS Jean-Patrice DE LAURENCIE Counsel to the Court I. Brief presentation of the law 1. Law No. 2008-3 of 3 January 2008 "for the development of competition in the service of consumers’ (OJ of 4 January 2008, p. 258), already The Chatel law, known as the "Chatel law", has two (...)

I. A recent and complex concept 1. A side-effect of deregulation 1. According to the Court of First Instance, a margin squeeze arises when a vertically integrated firm sells an upstream good to non-integrated downstream rivals at a price which cannot leave “an efficient competitor”1 “a (...)

Although the new EU Merger Control Regulation explicitly mentions the taking into account of efficiencies, these almost never determine the decision finally adopted. This is to some extent due to the difficulty of demonstrating that the three cumulative conditions are met (verifiability, (...)

The systematic hostility towards minimum resale prices in most jurisdictions - at least until the recent Leegin Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court - lacks solid economic foundations. Economic theory identified mechanisms through which minimum resale prices might be procompetitive or (...)

The notion of bidding markets encompasses a broad variety of situations, and such markets do not warrant a general favourable or unfavourable presumption for antitrust enforcement. But their characteristics call for specific types of economic analyses. In particular, the study of bidding data (...)

The Airtours test, used in order to determine whether a merger is likely to create or strengthen a collective dominant position, must be applied with caution. Mechanically checking each of the three criteria laid out by the Tribunal, one by one, would be misguided. On the contrary, a global (...)

Conc. conc. dec. 06-D-18 of 28 June 2006 on practices in the film advertising sector This decision of the Competition Council confirms that a high market share is not sufficient to conclude that a dominant position exists or that an exclusivity clause resembling tying is abusive. The case (...)

In the absence of any control at Community level, individual European States might grant large amounts of economically inefficient aid to businesses. This results from the weight of special interests and short-term preoccupations in domestic policymaking, as well as from the presence of (...)

CA Paris, 1st ch. H, 4 April 2006, Société des Établissements horticoles Georges Truffaut et a.v. Council, Dec. No. 05-D-32 of June 22, 2005, Royal Canin and its distribution network In a judgment of 4 April 2006, the Court of Appeal partially reversed the decision of the Competition Council in (...)

Competition Council orders courier companies to suspend agreements granting conditional rebates to broadcasters Conc. conc. dec. no. 06-MC-01 of 23 February 2006 relating to a request for precautionary measures presented by the companies Messageries Lyonnaises de Presse and Agora Diffusion (...)

Cons. conc. dec. no. 05-D-58 of 3 November 2005 on practices in the drinking water sector in Ile-de-France In 1998, the municipality of Saint-Michel sur Orge, the Federal Union of Consumers, and the Minister of the Economy and Finance referred to the Competition Council practices implemented (...)

Conc. conc. dec. no. 05-D-25 of 31 May 2005 relating to practices implemented by Yvert & Tellier on the market for stamp quotation catalogues The Competition Council has decided to accept the commitments offered by Yvert and Tellier. This company, which is active on the market for listing (...)

Conc. conc. dec. no. 05-D-16 of 26 April 2005 relating to practices implemented by the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD) Collective societies responsible for negotiating, collecting and distributing copyright are atypical objects for competition law. Community case law has (...)

Cons. conc. dec. no. 05-D-13 of March 18, 2005 relating to the practices implemented by the Canal Plus group in the pay-TV sector In a landmark decision, the French Competition Council affirms that the practice, by an undertaking in a dominant position, of discounts on a coupled offer is not (...)

Cons. conc. dec. n° 04-D-79 of 23 December 2004 relating to practices implemented by the Régie départementale des passages d’eau de la Vendée (RDPEV) The Council rejected the grievances notified by the Rapporteur against the Régie Départementale des passages d’eau de Vendée (hereinafter the Régie) (...)

Concordant Consensus, Dec. 04-D-73 of 21 December 2004 on the situation of competition in the Internet access supply sector. The Competition Council has rejected the objections notified to France Telecom in the Internet access market. Following a referral by the company T-Online, the (...)

Cons. conc. dec. no. 04-D-48 of October 14, 2004 relating to practices implemented by France Telecom, SFR Cegetel and Bouygues Telecom France Telecom and SFR Cegetel have just been sanctioned by the French Competition Council (Conseil de la concurrence) for "margin squeeze" practices in the (...)

Conc. conc. dec. no. 04-D-17 of 11 May 2004 on the referral and request for provisional measures submitted by AOL France SNC and AOL Europe SA On 11 May 2004, the Competition Council rejected AOL’s request for protective measures against Wanadoo. AOL considered that Wanadoo’s pricing structure (...)