FOREWORD : EU COMPETITION LAW – ECHR - PROCESS ISSUES - CONFLICTS OF INTERESTS - LAWYERS - CIVIL SERVANTS - LEGAL SECRETARIES
About conflicts of interests in EU competition proceedings
The debate over the compatibility of EU competition enforcement with Article 6 ECHR is far from over. Whilst there has been a great - some would say excessive - deal of papers on due process issues, less, if none attention has been paid to the rules and remedies that govern conflicts of interests amongst lawyers, civil servants, legal secretaries and Members of the Court. This short paper seeks to open the discussion on this issue.
1. In specialised journals, papers over EU competition procedure sell like hotcakes. With the anticipated accession of the European Union (“EU”) to the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”), the question whether the EU competition procedure is Strasbourg-compliant has unsurprisingly been a best-seller in contemporary competition scholarship.
2. Up to this point, the bar has been the primary contributor to this debate. [1] Lawyers have brought most, if not all, aspects of the competition enforcement system to the test bench: integration of investigative and decisional functions, parental liability doctrine, rules on access to file and hearings, standard of judicial review, duration of judicial proceedings, adequacy of fines over corporations, etc.
3. But one stone still remains
Access to this article is restricted to subscribers
Already Subscribed? Sign-in
Access to this article is restricted to subscribers.
Read one article for free
Sign-up to read this article for free and discover our services.