The New EU Competition Law

Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive account of the New EU Competition Law: an emerging understanding of the discipline that breaks from the consensus of the early 2000s and that ventures into uncharted territories. Competition law has undergone fundamental transformations in the past decade, from the rise and fall of the 'effects-based approach' to the challenge of Big Tech and the growing interaction with intellectual property. Making sense of these changes and fully grasping their implications can be difficult. The book discusses the shift from traditional enforcement in the industrial era to the sort of intervention that a knowledge-based economy demands. It presents the changes that the field is undergoing (policy priorities, relationship with regulation and intangible assets, move away from efficiency and consumer welfare) and illustrates them by reference to the most significant developments. The analysis includes an up-to-date evaluation of the Digital Markets Act and addresses the application of EU competition law to key areas, including energy, pharma, telecommunications and online platforms. Conceived as a 'modular' book, practitioners and advanced students will find it useful as a map to navigate the underlying trends and as an in-depth dissection of the key case law and administrative practice of the past decade.