By Bruno Zanettin

Description

The issue of international antitrust enforcement is high on the agenda for both developed and developing countries. Bilateral cooperation between antitrust agencies, in particular the European Commission and US agencies, is the focus of this new work. It first shows how bilateral cooperation was developed as a response to the limits of the unilateral and extraterritorial application of national competition laws, and how it has evolved from an instrument initially designed to avoid conflicts into a tool aimed at coordinating joint investigations of international competition cases. It then considers how bilateral cooperation could be used optimally, by analysing two forms of advanced cooperation: the exchange of confidential information, and positive comity, which is the only satisfactory answer competition law can provide to market access cases. It shows that the use of such instruments is limited by significant legal and political obstacles, even in the context of the exemplary EC US relationship.

The book therefore argues that the efficient use of bilateral cooperation will be limited to a small number of well-established competition agencies. If international anticompetitive practices are to be efficiently addressed by an increasingly large and heterogeneous group of competition agencies, horizontal cooperation between antitrust agencies must be complemented by a multilateral and supranational solution going beyond proposals currently put forward. The book concludes that only the WTO and its dispute settlement system could provide the basis for such a system.

Bruno Zanettin works in the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission in Brussels.

Contents

Table of Cases

Table of Treaties

Table of Legislation

Introduction 1

1 Addressing international restrictive practices at the national level: a necessary but insufficient step 7

1 The generalisation of the effects doctrine as the first response to the globalisation of anticompetitive practices 7

2 The practical limitations to the unilateral application of domestic laws in international competition cases 33

2 Soft cooperation, or the coordination of antitrust investigations 53

1 Towards increased cooperation: the evolution of the provisions of the existing bilateral agreements 53

2 Soft cooperation as it stands: the implementation of the bilateral agreements 78

3 Towards hard cooperation: the exchange of confidential information 119

1 Reluctance to conclude agreements on exchange of information is a characteristic of international cooperation in the field of antitrust 121

2 The instruments of exchange of information 145

4 Towards hard cooperation: positive comity 183

1 The experience of positive comity shows the possible scope and the limits of the use of this instrument 185

2 Assessing the potential legal scope of positive comity 198

3 Conclusion 225

5 Completing bilateral cooperation: the multilateral option 229

1 A plurilateral agreement on competition rules: a necessary but difficult step to complement bilateral cooperation between antitrust agencies 229

2 The possible content of a multilateral agreement on competition policy, in the light of the experience acquired through bilateral cooperation 250

3 Conclusion 277

Conclusion 279

Published Year: 2002 Format: Hard Back ISBN: 9781841133515 Publisher: Hart Publishing, Oxford No of Pages: 336 Our Price: £ 64.00 Reviews: 0 reivew(s).

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