Pinar Akman () (Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia)
Abstract
This paper examines the travaux preparatoires (prepatory documents) of Article 82EC which have so far been disregarded in the literature in order to find out the legislative intent of the provision. The legislative intent is important for understanding what Article 82EC currently is and aims at since its objectives have never been set out clearly by Community institutions. By using the travaux preparatoires the paper seeks to defy the common position that Article 82EC is based on 'ordoliberal' foundations. It shows that the drafters of Article 82EC were mainly concerned with increasing 'efficiency' and were not against accumulation of power per se. They did not intend to protect the competitors of dominant undertakings, but merely their customers. Thus, the provision was intended to apply to only 'exploitative' abuses and not 'exclusionary' abuses. Their main worry being 'increasing the size of the pie', their position on the objective of Article 82EC was closer to what one might today call 'total welfare' than 'consumer welfare'.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia in its series Working Papers with number
07-5.