The 8th International PhD Students’ Conference on Competition Law took place on 10 October 2018 in Białystok, Poland. The conference focused on EU State aid law. It was organized by the Department of Public Economic Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Białystok. The international character of the conference provided an excellent opportunity for PhD students to exchange...
On 9 May 2018, the Fifth National Academic Conference ‘Consumer in the Rail Passenger Market’ was held at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Łódź (WPiAUŁ). The event was organised by the Student Society of Energy Law and Other Infrastructural Sectors of the University of Łódź, the Department of European Economic Law of WPiA UŁ and the Polish Foundation of...
On 26 April 2018, the second National Academic Conference ‘Security, regulation and competition of the energy market’ was held at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Łódź. The Society of Energy Law and Other Infrastructural Sectors of the University of Łódź acted as the main organiser of the Conference.
Joint ventures may create risks for competition. Those risks may be carried by the very structure of the relevant market, or the creation of conditions fostering the coordination of the market conduct of a joint venture and its parent entities or the parent entities themselves. At the end of last year, Dr. Daria Kostecka-Jurczyk, an academic active in the area of EU law, economic...
2017 brought about a significant and long awaited change in the rules applicable to dawn raids in Poland. After many years of being criticized by scholars and practitioners, the practice of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection – consisting of the subsequent review of electronic data copied during an inspection at the authority premises and without...
Western Balkan jurisdictions (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia (FYROM)) are often outside the focus of the competition community in the EU. This paper aims to rectify that, by providing an overview of the most interesting competition law developments in these jurisdictions during 2017. The overview will show that, despite similarities in their competition...
This article discusses the framework of selective distribution agreements within EU competition law following the Coty Germany case and the EU Commission’s 2017 E-commerce report. It argues that the judgment removed, in essence, the limitation of sales via online platforms from the ‘by object box’. In respect of luxury goods, the ban is considered not to infringe competition law...
This essay raises a number of theses in support for a more liberalised approach to EU Net Neutrality rules. It offers a graded system of levels of regulatory intervention, arguing that soft Net Neutrality rules are capable of meeting all positive objectives of regulation without causing the problems generated by Hard Net Neutrality rules, such as those currently in place in the...
The legal basis the European Commission (EC) choses for its actions when it finds a Member State’s action (or inaction) to be in breach of its obligations stemming from its EU membership vary in different fields of law. This is particularly visible in State aid on one side, and general infringement proceedings on the other. But the line between the general character of a possible...
The paper presents four pillars of competition law that can be recognised in the European Union and Member States, namely EU competition law, national competition law sensu stricto, national competition law sensu largo and competition rules sensu largissimo. In order to demonstrate that this multi-faceted and complex system is able to work in an orderly manner, it is considered...
The paper aims at showing the influence and the views espoused by economic theories and schools of economics on competition policy embedded in antitrust law and conducted by competition authorities in the field of vertical agreements. The scope of the paper demonstrates how substantially the economization of antitrust law has changed the assessment as to the harmfulness of...
Any discussion of private antitrust enforcement usually focuses on substantive law and proceedings applicable to private antitrust cases. Those elements are important, however, the efficacy of both public and private enforcement relies upon rules of law (substantive and procedural) along with their application. The latter constitutes a substantial aspect affecting the...
The EU Antitrust Damages Actions Directive does not include provisions for collective redress. Each EU member state is free to provide national regulation on this matter. The Portuguese legal system provided regulation on actio popularis since 1995. The ‘rational apathy’ of individual consumers may lead to non-reparation of damage and be of significant benefit for the company...
Leniency programmes in competition law make it possible to grant immunity from fines, or a reduction of any fine that would otherwise have been imposed on an undertaking who was a party to an unlawful agreement restricting competition. This immunity or fine reduction is granted as a reward for the cooperation with the competition authority and the provision of evidence of an...
The corporate human rights development was fueled by the increasing amount of fines imposed on both European and national level. For many years, the jurisprudence of the ECtHR has classified administrative, including competition law enforcement as a quasi-criminal process during which human rights shall be respected to a certain extent. This paper strives to explain the evolution...
The European consumer policy relies on the ideal of consumer empowerment, which involves providing all consumers with detailed information on the goods on offer. This policy also applies to the electronic communications sector, and empowering consumers who are the end-users of internet access services. The author reviews behavioural law and economics literature that pertains to...
The 7th International PhD Students’ Conference on Competition Law took place on 10 October 2017 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Białystok (Poland). The Conference was organized by the Department of Public Economic Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Białystok and focused on issues related to private enforcement of competition law as well as Staid aid. The...
On 8–9 May 2018 the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ (Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’) hosted the international conference ‘Recent developments in EU Competition Law’. The event, which gathered eleven speakers from eight different European universities and over fifty participants, marked the beginning of the ‘Gaetano Filangieri’ conference series, devoted to the...
The Book entitled ‘Implementation of the EU Damages Directive in Central and Eastern European Countries’, edited by Professor Anna Piszcz, was published in Warsaw, Poland in 2017. The publication date of this book was perfectly chosen, bearing in mind that Directive 2014/104/EU on antitrust damages actions (hereinafter, the Damages Directive) was signed into law on 26 November...
A key theme of the book under review here is the engagement of individuals (mainly consumers) in the enforcement of competition law. The involvement of consumers in a competition case, and their will to initiate proceedings against antitrust infringers before civil courts, seems to be natural fuel for the development of private enforcement of competition law – Maciej Gac confirms...
The Polish Act on Counteracting the Unfair Use of Superior Bargaining Power in the Trade in Agricultural and Food Products was adopted on 15 December 2016 and entered into force on 12 July 2017. The new legal framework resembles, in some places, the legal rules contained in the 2007 Act on Competition and Consumer Protection, elsewhere resembles the 1993 Act on Combating Unfair...
The paper examines strengths and weakness of the French system of competition enforcement, with the aim of contributing to the discussion on the institutional design of systems of competition law enforcement. In this regard, special attention will be devoted to choosing to introduce a clear separation between investigative and adjudicative functions within the same institution...
The notion of fiscal aid is becoming crucial in determining the relationship between supra-national integration and national tax sovereignty; the selectivity criterion is often key in the assessment of compatibility of fiscal measures with Article 107(1) TFEU. Therefore, the notion of selectivity as defined by the recent case-law of the CJEU and decision-making practice of the...