TILEC Seminar: Or Brook

Or Brook  is a lecturer of competition law at the University of Leeds. Her Phd, from the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG), is a quantitative and qualitative empirical study, examining the role of public policy and non-competition interests in the multi-level governance enforcement system of EU competition law. Or holds an LLB in economics and law from the Hebrew University (distinction) and an LLM from the University of Amsterdam in European Competition Law and Regulation (distinction). Before re-joining academia, she was an associate attorney dealing with commercial litigation matters. 

Abstract:

This article questions the common view that the modernisation of EU competition law has removed public policy considerations from the enforcement of Article 101 TFEU. Based on a large quantitative and qualitative database, which includes all of the Commission’s and five national competition authorities’ decisions (N≈1600), it maintains that modernisation has merely shifted the consideration of public policy from the substantive scope of Article 101(3) TFEU to procedural priority setting decisions. Instead of engaging in a complex balancing of competition and public policy considerations, the competition authorities have simply refrained from pursuing cases against anti-competitive agreements that promote public policy objectives or settled those case by accepting negotiated remedies.

This outcome, the article claims, is a double-edged sword. The Commission’s attempt to narrow down the scope of Article 101(3) as part of modernisation has not eliminated the role of public policy in the enforcement. Rather, undertakings can reasonably assume that restrictions of competition that produce some public policy objectives will not be enforced, even if they do not meet the conditions for an exception. These discretionary non-enforcement decisions have a detrimental impact on the effectiveness, uniformity, and legal certainty of EU competition law enforcement.