POLITICAL SCIENCE

Competition in the European Union

Competition in the European Union

Regulation on competition and cartels

The law of competition comprises two restrictive guidelines outlined in the EC Treaty: * It is prohibited to any agreement that limits competition * The strongest companies will not abuse a dominant position

Agreements between companies

These are agreements aimed at fixing prices, limit or control production, markets, technical development or investment, share markets to customers, applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions. It is the responsibility of the Commission to ensure the implementation of these standards. A Member State may request an investigation or the Commission may itself undertake voluntarily. If you encounter any breach of the rules that promote competition, the Commission shall adopt measures to eliminate them. The Commission may take the following actions (Bannerman, 2002, pp. 133):

Individual decisions

a. Inter disciplinary proceedings

b. Entering a "negative declaration" so that states that there has been no infringement of competition rules;

Block exemptions

For example, there regulations for certain types of actions or practices. This simplifies the administrative work of the Commission and do not have to treat each case individually. Moreover, this also makes it easier for enterprises to meet their obligations. The Commission has been widely adopted block exemptions, both for certain categories of horizontal agreements or cooperative agreements (between competitors in the same sector), to categories of vertical agreements (concluded between undertakings at different levels of the same production). A block exemption significant is the automotive sector. The Regulations of the Commission agreed in 2002, suppressed important regulatory restrictions with regard to distribution. It is valid for eight years and will, among other things, that companies competing in the same sector have increased access to spare parts, and increase competition among retailers (Brammer, 2009, pp. 211).

However, other arrangements which the Commission considers as harmful to competition are prohibited without exception, for example, the following:

Horizontal agreements

Price fixing agreements

Agreements on common outlets

Agreements on production quotas or delivery

Market sharing agreements or the same level of the distribution chain

Vertical Agreements

Agreements to fix prices of sale

Exclusive distribution agreements in a given territory

A particularly significant was the company Volkswagen (1998), in 1998, when the Commission fined Volkswagen AG with a fine of 102 million euros due to agreements which seek to prevent suppliers of Volkswagen vehicles in Italy they sold to buyers not resident in that country. Although later the Court of Justice of the European Union reduced the fine to 90 million.

To understand the nature, background and objectives of the common EU policy on competition must proceed from the objective factor, that this policy represents one of the areas of integration of the EU. Began in the 50's work on the Common Market and the absence of that time in most of the integrating countries of comprehensive national anti-trust laws necessitated. In this regulation at the supranational level. in this regulation at the supranational level. As a result, the Treaty of Rome, along with industry trends of integration (common agricultural, transport, trade policy) ...