By John Taladay and Paul Lugard*   Introduction Governments and competition agencies considering new laws to regulate competition need not act blindly. Without much experience in competition regulation, they can and should draw upon well-recognized international principles for the design and implementation of ex ante regulation. This article identifies ten principles for ex ante competition […]

International cooperation on competition issues among agencies and governments can be great for consumers and companies alike, avoiding a host of inefficient and potentially conflicting outcomes.  But while cooperation in competition enforcement has a lengthy and venerated history, the prospect of such cooperation in competition policy design and legal implementation is a newer concept that presents […]

Cooperation agreements establishing the possibility of an exchange of information between competition authorities are in general based on two hypotheses. First, they assume that the cooperating competition authorities will independently decide which cases they will investigate. Second, with respect to the cases on which cooperation is actually going to take place, it is assumed that […]

Antitrust enforcement remains a concrete policy domestically, and an eccentricity internationally. Yet, global antitrust is imperative: International mergers, international cartels, and multinationals engaging with customers across borders prove the need for greater legal certainty when it comes to antitrust enforcement and policy. In this article, I expose the impossibility theorem of global antitrust: international coordination […]

Some countries have called for several years for international cooperation for competition in digital markets. Yet the declarations are political without concrete policy proposals on how to achieve cooperation. International cooperation is vital to ensure a common approach that minimizes compliance and enforcement costs at a time of an avalanche of investigations and legislations worldwide […]

Competition agencies should build on the existing and successful case-by-case cooperation framework used in assessing mergers that are notified in multiple jurisdictions and develop similar working practices when regulating competition in digital markets. In merger control we see an example of cooperation, coordination, and convergence that serves to streamline individual enforcement efforts and the mutual […]

A new sense of urgency and purpose has enlivened our international conversations about digital platforms, stimulating unprecedented levels of co-operation between competition and consumer authorities globally. In addition to conducting our own inquiries and reporting to Australian lawmakers, international co-operation has been crucial in informing the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s current thinking on the […]

By Patricia Bascunana-Ambros & Renato Ferrandi1   I. What Are “Emerging Competition Issues” Emerging competition issues (or risks to competition) can be described as scenarios in which certain new market characteristics create a threat to competition. These can include changes in the conduct of companies operating in concerned markets or in consumer behavior; or new […]

The willingness of national courts to set global FRAND royalty rates for patents that are essential to key industry standards has led to international jurisdictional conflicts, competing anti-suit injunctions and a global race to the courthouse. This essay supports the adoption of legislation that repudiates global FRAND rates set unilaterally by courts in other countries […]

Recent developments regarding global competition enforcement and foreign direct investment, or FDI, review regimes have created uncertainty for cross-border transactions.  Specifically, global merger control authorities have become increasingly aggressive in “calling in” transactions under so-called “voluntary” regimes and a number of FDI review regimes recently have been established or expanded.  These developments have resulted in […]

By Roman Inderst2 & Stefan Thomas3   Austria and the Netherlands are two examples where since 2021 the goal of (ecological) sustainability has been enshrined in competition law or respective guidelines. On the topic of sustainability the European Commission and various competition agencies have formed taskforces, commissioned expert reports (e.g., “Technical Report”) and engaged in […]

By Despina Pachnou1   Competition law enforcement is part of a country’s overall law enforcement and is shaped by a country’s legal system, history, and culture. Some competition authorities follow common law, others civil law; in some systems, the competition authority takes enforcement decisions at the first instance, whereas in others the first-instance decision-maker is […]