Parret, Laura --- "The Multiple Personalities of EU Competition Law: Time for a Comprehensive Debate on its Objectives" [2012] ELECD 404; in Zimmer, Daniel (ed), "The Goals of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Goals of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zimmer, Daniel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857936608

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: The Multiple Personalities of EU Competition Law: Time for a Comprehensive Debate on its Objectives

Author(s): Parret, Laura

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

4. The multiple personalities of EU
competition law: time for a
comprehensive debate on its
objectives
Laura Parret*

1 THE EVOLVING OBJECTIVES OF EC
COMPETITION POLICY

1.1 Introduction

This chapter aims to make a contribution to the debate on the objectives
of EC competition law; its purpose is not to give an exhaustive histori-
cal overview but to show how many different objectives can be identi-
fied. Multiple objectives still exist and they are not a thing of the past as
is sometimes suggested. The objectives of a system of competition law
have a clear impact on legislation and decision-making, so the debate
is not merely theoretical.1 A number of specific points are made with
the purpose of challenging some often-expressed ideas about objectives.
One, for example, is that the focus on consumers is not only the result of
the recent more economic approach (below section 3), the consumer has
been part of competition law since the earliest case law of the EU Courts.


* Dr iur (Tilburg), Belgian Competition Council and Senior Lecturer of Law,
Tilburg University, The Netherlands. A longer version of this chapter was pub-
lished as an article entitled `Shouldn't we know what we are protecting? Yes we
should! A plea for a comprehensive and solid debate on the objectives of EU com-
petition law' in [2010] European Competition Journal, 6(2), 339­376. It was also
published as a TILEC Discussion Paper in a previous version. All views expressed
are strictly ...