Petit, Nicolas --- "Parallel Trade: Econ-oclast Thoughts on a Dogma of EU Competition Law" [2011] ELECD 789; in Govaere, Inge; Quick, Reinhard; Bronckers, Marco (eds), "Trade and Competition Law in the EU and Beyond" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Trade and Competition Law in the EU and Beyond

Editor(s): Govaere, Inge; Quick, Reinhard; Bronckers, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857935663

Section: Chapter 20

Section Title: Parallel Trade: Econ-oclast Thoughts on a Dogma of EU Competition Law

Author(s): Petit, Nicolas

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

20. Parallel trade: econ-oclast thoughts
on a dogma of EU competition law
Nicolas Petit

20.1 INTRODUCTION

With an unparalleled ability to explain complex legal issues in a catchy and
creative manner, Professor Jacques Bourgeois has set a high standard for
legal scholars. This short chapter modestly attempts to pay tribute to his
academic brilliance, in shedding new light on the European Union (EU)
competition law principle that firms' attempts to block parallel trade from
`low price countries' to `high price countries' in the EU are akin to
`hardcore' restrictions of competition infringing Articles 101 and 102 of
the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The choice
of a topic that lies at the intersection of competition and trade policies will
not come as a surprise to readers familiar with Professor Bourgeois' work.
And since Professor Bourgeois is a man of many languages, this study uses
the words of economics to review this remarkably stable issue, at least in the
case-law of the European courts.
In the past decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has repeatedly
upheld European Commission (the Commission) decisions against firms
that had sought to limit parallel trade within the EU. This is because
parallel trade is deemed to improve consumer welfare, through downward
price equalization. The leading cases involve sectors where goods/services
are subject to price differentials across countries and/or intellectual prop-
erty rights (IPRs), such as pharmaceuticals, cars, luxury goods and
branded products, etc. In GlaxoSmithKline, for ...