Rights of defence and competition law: An overview of EU and national case law

Decisions of the Commission are reviewable for their legality under Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”). It is not necessary to set out the full range of decisions that are capable of challenge under Article 263 TFEU, but they include (purely by way of example) decisions concerning infringements of Article 101 TFEU (anti-competitive agreements) and 102 TFEU (abuse of dominance) and decisions regarding mergers. One of the more important bases for the challenge of Commission decisions is the failure to respect the “rights of the defence”. [1] This foreword seeks to explore the recent EU case-law in this area. It does so in a comparative law fashion, comparing the EU approach with the (in formal terms different, but in substantive terms, similar)