Introduction

So far, we have observed one institution's enforcement of EC competition law: the European Commission. The discussion of controversial mergers in chapters 1 and 8 provided strong indications that the institutional makeup of the Commission plays a determining role in the final outcome. To some, this is evidence of the way EC competition law is corrupted to serve illegitimate aims, while to others, the deliberative process of decision-making is justified by the way competition law is embedded within the EC Treaty and should be used to serve the wider aims of the Community, not merely to preserve consumer welfare. While the political aspect of competition decisions came under severe scrutiny in the 1990s, in particular by German scholars and practitioners, developments since that time within DG Competition (that segment of the Commission that carries out the operational aspect of law enforcement) have brought some changes to the nature of competition law enforcement. These include increased economic sophistication and growing attention to new theories of anticompetitive effects. These trends were caused by DG Competition interacting with US antitrust enforcers, and by the increased number of economists working in DG Competition, culminating in the creation of the post of Chief Competition Economist in 2003.

The growth of economic analysis and expertise is analogous to that which occurred in the United States in the early 1960s, where increasing numbers of economists in the DOJ and FTC affected the direction of antitrust law, facilitating the success of the Chicago School views in the 1970s.