This chapter analyses the relationship among competition law and the various sectoral regulatory regimes making up the EU body of economic regulation, at the systemic, substantive and institutional level. In the light thereof and of experience with comparable tools in other jurisdictions, it makes recommendations regarding the interplay between market investigations and sector-specific regulation. In our opinion, market investigations could easily be integrated in the existing body of EU economic regulation. At the systemic level, this new instrument should have a horizontal scope and hence be applicable to regulated sectors, to usefully close eventual regulatory gaps. At the substantive level, it should rest on economic knowledge and methodology, in line with existing EU economic regulation, yet without being straitjacketed within specific competition law analysis. At the institutional level, a close transversal cooperation between the Commission and the relevant NRA(s) is needed at every stage of a market investigation implementation, if and when it is applied in regulated sectors.

In the resilience theories, multilevel, cross-scale and polycentric governance approaches represent a governance approach that can match ecological dynamic structures and scales, as well as a structure providing for a diversity of measures. Multilevel and polycentric governance are generally displayed in how societies are governed with dynamic levels, including nested, intertwined contacts, and cooperation among a number of actors and organizations. The legal system is by nature similar to resilience governance structures when it comes to multilevel governance. Law is developed, structured, designed, adopted, and implemented at many different scales and levels in parallel and is often governed by separate authorities or administrative organizations. Law is constituted by nested systems and measures that function in parallel at different geographical and temporal scales. However, in the perspective of matching law with resilience, this feature calls for a review of, e.g., authority, coordination, review, and the implementation in overlapping, polycentric legal systems.

This chapter explores the interface between competition and consumer policies, law and institutions as it is emerging in ASEAN. It analyses the reasons for the traditional separation of these two fields, both generally and ASEAN in particular, and then explains the case for an integrated approach to policymaking and a coordinated approach to institutional design, pointing to international examples of such approaches. The chapter considers the evidence of integration and coordination in ASEAN to date, and considers reasons for the functionally silo-ed approach that has been exhibited in most member states thus far. It argues that increased recognition of the positive interdependencies between competition and consumer policies should be a key element of ASEAN’s future development, consistent with theories of networked governance, trading up and contextualised transplantation.