Affiliation: Department of Law, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

The enforcement of EU competition law needs to balance protection of fundamental rights with effective enforcement. In its history the European Commission and the European Courts have incrementally developed enforcement tools and enforcement standards to improve this balance. In recent times three themes have emerged, and this is a good time to assess their impact. The first is the incremental steps taken in the past five years to sharpen the legitimacy of the Commission’s formal enforcement policy, in particular the more prominent role for the hearing officer and the sharpened judicial review standards advocated by some Advocates General and by the Courts. The second is the continued use of commitments after the blessing received in Alrosa: how legitimate and how coherent is the Commission’s approach to commitments? The third is the enforcement of competition law informed by a more economics-based approach: how has this affected public enforcement: is the Commission setting better priorities? Is the implementation of the more economic approach happening, and how are courts reacting?

This workshop brought together practitioners, scholars and doctoral researchers to discuss these themes under Chatham House rules.