Lankhorst, M.

English

Some practices that come within the scope of the antitrust laws, such as price fixing by competitors, are by their very nature harmful to the interests of consumers. Generally firms that engage in them will try to conceal these practices and the work of the antitrust authorities will consist of discovering them. In legal proceedings concerning such cases, the harmfulness of the practice itself is seldom an issue of debate. The scope of the antitrust laws also extends over practices whose implications for consumers are much less obvious and very much dependent on the specifics of the market in which they are used. A joint venture, for example, may be a means to pool expertise and capacity that allows a better product to be introduced to the market at an earlier point in time. Yet it may also be used by parent companies to facilitate collusion. For such practices to be condemned under the antitrust laws, evidence must be produced of their actual harmful effects on consumers. This thesis presents an evaluation of the level of legal certainty offered by the method of investigation that the European Commission adopts to examine these more ambiguous practices. This must be seen against the background of the recent modernisation of the European Commission’s interpretation of Article 81 of the EC Treaty (which prohibits agreements in restraint of competition). It is argued that these reforms, in particular due to the way they have been put into practice, have put pressure on firms’ ability to predict whether their agreement will be challenged and found to have produced negative effects. It is examined, also, how legal certainty may be improved. Specifically, the costs and benefits of requiring the Commission to articulate more clearly what harm to consumers it expects from the restraint it challenges and to present more empirical evidence in support of this claim are considered

International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)Increasing the requirements to show antitrust harm in modernised effects-basedanalysis: an assessment of the impact on the efficiency of enforcement of Art 81ECLankhorst, M.Publication date2010Link to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Lankhorst, M. (2010). Increasing the requirements to show antitrust harm in modernisedeffects-based analysis: an assessment of the impact on the efficiency of enforcement of Art81 EC. [Thesis, fully internal, Universiteit van Amsterdam]. Amsterdam Center for Law &Economics.General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:08 Mar 2023 6ACKNOWLEDGMENTS    I would want to start by thanking my parents, who have taught me to trust my own judgment and the importance of persevering, and my wife Muriel and my children Saro and Morane, who have given me the energy I needed to see this through to the end.  I owe many thanks to my promotor Joe McCahery, particularly for helping me improve my writing and argumentation, and I must also thank my promotor Arnoud Boot. Finally, I am thankful to the members of the promotie commissie, who all made comments that allowed me to considerably improve my work.  

Increasing the requirements to show antitrust harm in modernised effects-based analysis: an assessment of the impact on the efficiency of enforcement of Art 81 EC

https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/2067114/72056_03.pdf

Increasing the requirements to show antitrust harm in modernised effects-based analysis: an assessment of the impact on the efficiency of enforcement of Art 81 EC

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International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications