On the Application of Competition Law as Regulation: Elements for a Theory

Summary:

This article purports to identify, in a systematic manner, the conditions under which competition law replicates sector-specific regimes. In addition, it tries to single out the concerns that are generally associated with such instances and examine whether, and to what extent, they are justified.

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Section two shows, first, why it is artificial to differentiate between competition law and regulation on the basis of the features that are generally associated with the latter. This section also identifies the economic conditions under which competition law adopts these features. Section three develops a coherent framework in an attempt to address systematically the concerns that are raised in these situations and in particular the risk that competition law is instrumentalised to pursue objectives that are foreign to it. Section four applies the conclusions of the previous two sections to some recent cases.