This article describes, and puts in context, the evolution of the enforcement practice of the European Commission in the area of EU antitrust law (Articles 101 and 102 TFEU). It considers all formal decisions adopted in the period between 1966 -when the European Court of Justice delivered the two seminal rulings that marked the discipline -and the end of 2017. The article classifies Commission decisions in accordance with four enforcement paradigms. The descriptive statistics show that the cases that the Commission chooses to prioritise have changed over the years. First, enforcement has progressively moved towards the core and the outer boundaries of the system. Second, it has become policy-driven rather than law-driven. Third, the nature of the cases chosen by the Commission is consistent with its commitment to a 'more economics-based approach' to enforcement. Finally, these cases signal a move towards a more ambitious stage in the process of the integration of Member States' economies.
This article examines the meaning and scope of the notion of anticompetitive effects in EU competition law. It does so by bringing together several strands of the case law (and this across all provisions, namely Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and merger control). The analysis is structured around a framework that considers the main variables that shape the notion in practice: the time variable (actual or potential effects); the dimensions of competition and the counterfactual; the meaning of effects and the probability threshold (plausibility, likelihood, certainty). The exercise shows that it is possible to discern a concrete meaning to the notion of anticompetitive effects. Some central questions, including the role and operation of the counterfactual and the threshold of effects, have already been answered by the Court of Justice. In particular, it has long been clear that anticompetitive effects amount to more than a mere competitive disadvantage and/or a limitation of a firm’s freedom of action. The impact on equally efficient firms’ ability and/or incentive to compete would need to be established. At the same time, some open questions and some potential areas of friction (relating, inter alia, to stakeholders’ tendency to conflate appreciability and effects) remain. These are also discussed.
Evidence that an input or platform is indispensable is sometimes required to establish an abuse of a dominant position under Article 102 TFEU; the circumstances in which this condition is required are not clear.• A systematic analysis of the case law suggest that indispensability is required where intervention (i) would be structural and/or (ii) would amount to prescribing the terms and conditions of access to an input or platform ('proactive intervention').• The analysis of the case law is useful to shed light on the controversies around recent cases, such as Google Shopping and Slovak Telekom, and ongoing investigations by the European Commission.
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