A PYMNTS Company

Antitrust Law in Times of Crisis = Crisis of Antitrust Law?

By  |  March 30, 2020

Marcel Nuys & Florian Huerkamp, D’Kart

The virus challenges everything – competition law is no exception to that rule. Marcel Nuys and Florian Huerkamp give a first account of the situation in antitrust law in our blog. And while nothing is safe these days, one thing is: This is not the last time we have to deal with competition law in times of the Covid-crisis.

The famous and influential German Supreme Court Justice Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde spent a good amount of his academic work on the question how legal systems should and can deal with cases of ultimate emergency (the infamous “Ausnahmezustand”). Unlike others Böckenförde took the clear position that even in the Ausnahmezustand there is no “carte blanche” for arbitrary action that is no longer bound by legal principle.

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