Judicial review and competition law: An overview of EU and national case law

The previous foreword for this publication was written in April 2011 by Ian S. Forrester [1], a long-time advocate of due process, and now a judge at the General Court of the EU. A few months later, the European Court of Human Rights adopted its landmark judgment in Menarini, [2] ruling that, in light of the criminal nature of antitrust fines, Article 6 ECHR required that fining decisions imposed by administrative bodies be appealable before a court that could review and alter such decisions in all material aspects [3]. This has led to a remarkable change of perception, at European level, both as to the supposed imperfections of the European Commission’s (“Commission”) decision-making process and as to the – again supposed - limitations of judicial review in Luxembourg under Articles 261