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Leitão Marques, Maria Manuel; Abrunhosa, Ana --- "Cooperative Networking: Bridging the Cooperation–Concentration Gap" [2006] ELECD 303; in Ullrich, Hanns (ed), "The Evolution of European Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: The Evolution of European Competition Law

Editor(s): Ullrich, Hanns

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845427016

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Cooperative Networking: Bridging the Cooperation–Concentration Gap

Author(s): Leitão Marques, Maria Manuel; Abrunhosa, Ana

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

6. Cooperative networking: bridging the
cooperation­concentration gap
Maria Manuel Leitão Marques and
Ana Abrunhosa*

I INTRODUCTION
Cooperation between firms is now a powerful tool in the orchestration of
markets in a world economy. In some sectors, such as airlines, cooperation has
been losing its contractual nature and is becoming much more institutional,
closer to a concentration. In others, like the electronics or automobile indus-
tries, the contractual element is still there and cooperation is far more precar-
ious and flexible. But even in these sectors, cooperation has become a
structural necessity to ensure competitiveness rather than being a cyclical
instrument for resolving a short-term problem.
Are these changes so important and widespread as to change the basic para-
digm that has inspired competition law and policy during the 20th century? In
a new emergent paradigm, should networks (far more than firms) become the
units to be considered by competition law? In that case, should competition
law be chiefly concerned with cooperation between networks and rather less
with the formation of networks themselves, except when these totally elimi-
nate competition? Ought competition law to confine itself to securing condi-
tions which guarantee that other competitors (new entrants) have access to the
relevant market? Should it devalue the restrictions that arise, for the partners
themselves, from such an alliance or network? Or should competition law
consider both internal and external competition restrictions?
These are some of the questions that we are going to discuss in this study.
First, we ...


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