Vogelaar, Floris O.W. --- "Closing Remarks" [2006] ELECD 466; in Cseres, J. Katalin; Schinkel, Pieter Maarten; Vogelaar, O.W. Floris (eds), "Criminalization of Competition Law Enforcement" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Criminalization of Competition Law Enforcement

Editor(s): Cseres, J. Katalin; Schinkel, Pieter Maarten; Vogelaar, O.W. Floris

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426088

Section: Chapter 20

Section Title: Closing Remarks

Author(s): Vogelaar, Floris O.W.

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

20. Closing remarks
Floris O.W. Vogelaar

Looking back at a wonderful one and a half days, at the same time I have
to look back in time. I remember that Claus Ehlermann and I met for the
first time in the spring of 1969. He was then working at the Legal Service
of the Commission, and I was a small and humble internee there, sharing
an office with Graham Child and Cornelis Canenbley just opposite his. It is
remarkable to note that 35 years later, we are still in the trade. However, the
point to be made today is that in July 1969 the Commission took the Quinine
cartel decision.1 That decision was the first in which the Commission ever
imposed a fine, 50,000 Ecu at the time, and as I remember it everybody came
out of their offices in the Loi Building of the Commission's Legal Service
onto the corridors to discuss this special event in sheer admiration.
Apart from the fact that that fine was only paid much later in 1984,
without any accrual of interest, it shows from where we came and where we
are nowadays. I also remember that a short time thereafter an official from
the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division came on secondment to
the Legal Service, and later I believe also to DG IV, Joel Davidow. When,
after a stay of six or eight months, he was back in America, he wrote an
article reporting on what he ...