CONFERENCE: ARTICLE 102 TFEU - ABUSE OF DOMINANT POSITION - AS EFFICIENT COMPETITOR TEST - ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Rebates: To hell with customers! (New Frontiers of Antitrust, Paris, 13 June 2016)

KEYWORDS

Panellists of the fourth roundtable’s of the New Frontiers of Antitrust Conference came back on persistent difficulties to reconcile competition law, particularly Article 102 TFEU enforcement, with economic analysis and a "more effects-based approach". The President of the Bundeskartellamt evokes the several developments that led to introduce a more economic approach within the European Union and describes difficulties competition authorities can face when enforcing Article 102 TFEU illustrated with the Deutsche Post AS Case. Finally, T. Soames and J. Vandenbussche expressed their fears as regards the latest positions adopted by the Court of Justice and the Commission on the value and scope of the 2009 Commission’s Guidance on exclusionary conducts, which are still described as a reliable tool on which undertakings may rely though.

The role of economic analysis in antitrust law enforcement Andreas Mundt President, Bundeskartellamt, Bonn I. The development of the “more economic approach” 1. The reorientation of the Commission’s competition law practice towards a more economic approach has progressed over several stages. In the late nineties the Commission fundamentally reformed its approach to vertical agreements with the adoption of the first Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EC) 2790/1999) and accompanying Vertical Guidelines. 2. A further step was the publication in 2000 of the Commission’s guidelines on horizontal mergers, followed by further block exemption regulations and guidelines. In merger control the introduction of the SIEC test in the 2004 EC Merger Regulation and the

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