Speaker: Professor Niamh Dunne (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Chair: TBC
About the lecture
By and large, EU competition law coexists peacefully with other regulatory norms. The existence of regulation does not oust the application of competition law, and compliance with one regime does not certify compliance with the other. In Meta Platforms, however, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice held that regulatory compliance (or non-compliance) may nonetheless provide a ‘vital clue’ as to whether behaviour is compatible with competition law in certain circumstances. This lecture will explore the implications of the Meta Platforms judgment and seek to explain and justify—if not necessarily defend—its approach.
We will consider, first, how regulation may shape the operation of markets and the actions of economic actors generally, and the consequences that follow for competition analysis. We then turn to two case studies where this question is particularly salient: cases where a regulatory norm is imported wholesale as the compliance standard for competition law, and cases where the anticompetitive conduct consists in ‘gaming’ or otherwise corrupting a regulatory framework. The lecture will ultimately argue that, where regulatory standards set the parameters of lawful competition in a market, a firm cannot object if the requirements of competition law reflect its regulatory obligations. But to constitute a competition violation in addition to a regulatory one, non-compliance or corrupt compliance requires something more, namely a deliberate positive act designed to give the firm an illegitimate market advantage.
About the speaker
Niamh Dunne is Professor at the Law School of the London School of Economics. She teaches and researches in competition law.
About Current Legal Problems
The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship. Sign up for the mailing list to receive emails about Current Legal Problems lectures
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