Friday, March 14, 2014
Senate (Omni Shoreham)
The contemporary strength of EU competition policy does not stem naturally and mechanically from the Treaty of Rome, nor from the spread of ‘neoliberal’ ideas since the 1980s. It is the product of decades of protracted political debates during which the Commission was able to secured decisive powers from the member-states, despite the unwillingness of some of the most powerful countries to do so. In this regard, the 1973-1989 period is decisive as the Commission managed to assert its central role in the implementation of competition policy with regards to cartels, state aids and mergers. The paper will focus on the later negotiation, which began in 1973 and was concluded in 1989 by a centralization of power on the Commission which is largely linked to path-dependencies of the 1960s. It will also take into account the neglected history of state aid control and its link with the negotiation on the merger regulation.
This study is based on the review of the large existing literature on the merger regulation negotiations, and on the archival collections of three countries (France, the UK, and Germany) and of the European Commission.
