Some Empirical Evidence on the Role of Presumptions and Evidentiary Standards on Antitrust (Under)Enforcement: Is the EC’s New Communication on Art.102 in the Right Direction?

We provide evidence based on the database of DG COMP decisions of Katsoulacos & Makri (2024) from 1992 – 2021 that Effects-Based (“EB”) increases the rate of acquittals significantly in EC in abuse of dominance and vertical restraint cases (relative to lower Evidentiary Standards, ES). A greater fraction of cases judged by EB are acquitted than when a lower ES (truncated EB) is adopted, which implies that the level of certainty for harm is lower than the Courts Standard of Proof i