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European competition law annual 1997: objectives of competition policy:
This volume is composed of papers presented during the Second Workshop on European Competition Law, held in June 1997. It focuses on the competition policy of the European Union, its relationship to multilateral treaties, and the relationship between its objectives and implementation issues. The workshop's participants were a group of about thirty-five high level officials from the world's major competition enforcement authorities and international organisations, scholars and private practitioners specialising in competition. Participants came mainly from the EU, but also from Canada, Japan, Mexico, Poland and the United States. The workshop discussed different aspects of the fundamental question of what objectives are or should be pursued by competition policy. During the first workshop on the problems of enforcing competition law in a 'federal' context, it became clear that some of the substantive and procedural/institutional problems with which the EU has been struggling might be linked to implicit divergences about the objectives of the EU's competition policy. This is a subject rarely discussed to avoid revealing major differences of opinion that might prove divisive. However, it is argued that a better understanding of these objectives is useful both for substantive and procedural reforms. In addition, a discussion about objectives of competition policy seemed appropriate in view of the efforts, undertaken in the framework of the World Trade Organisation, to determine the prospects for a multilateral competition code. The resulting book contains a number of working papers under four headings. First, competition policy objects; second, competition policy objectives in the context of a multilateral competition code; third, competition law implementation at present and fourth, future competition law. Each section also contains a detailed account of its related panel discussion.
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