The Concept of Anti-competitive Object Under EU Competition Law: Comparative Perspectives and European Realities

Abstract

This chapter analyses EU competition law’s grasp of anti-competitive object in the light of the ECJ’s judgments in Allianz and Cartes bancaires and the Commission’s new De Minimis Notice. The chapter takes a comparative perspective, and provides a detailed outlook to this concept’s counter-part in US antitrust law (per se illegality). The chapter ends with the author’s critical evaluation of the new, elusive notion.