Van den Bergh, Roger --- "The Difficult Reception of Economic Analysis in European Competition Law" [2002] ELECD 88; in Cucinotta, Antonio; Pardolesi, Roberto; Van den Bergh, J. Roger (eds), "Post-Chicago Developments in Antitrust Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: Post-Chicago Developments in Antitrust Law

Editor(s): Cucinotta, Antonio; Pardolesi, Roberto; Van den Bergh, J. Roger

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843760016

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The Difficult Reception of Economic Analysis in European Competition Law

Author(s): Van den Bergh, Roger

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

2. The difficult reception of economic
analysis in European competition law
Roger Van den Bergh

INTRODUCTION
European law seems to be a field `par excellence' for the integration of the legal
and the economic discipline, since the EC Treaty itself regards legal rules as
instruments to achieve economic ends.1 Therefore the criticisms voiced against
Law and Economics because of its instrumentalist character cannot be adhered
to in the context of European law. However, traditional lawyers still have a
preponderant influence on the formulation of European legal rules and their
interpretation and enforcement. This is also the case in the field of competition
law, which is based upon economic foundations so that the importance of
economic analysis should be obvious. Productive and allocative efficiency, as
defined in welfare economics, are not the only thing European regulators have
in mind when they pass competition laws and implement them in practice.
Obviously, confining antitrust to efficiency goals2 permits regulators and courts
to employ the teachings of economic analysis to a much broader extent than if
the opposite view that other goals (such as distribution of wealth or protection
of small competitors) are equally important is accepted.
In recent years, the European Commission has attested an increasing will-
ingness to take into account economic insights when interpreting and applying
rules of competition law.3 The European Court of Justice had already cleared
the way for a more economically inspired reasoning decades ago.4 It is now
generally acknowledged that a lack of precise ...