Künzler, Adrian --- "Economic Content of Competition Law: The Point of Regulating Preferences" [2012] ELECD 410; in Zimmer, Daniel (ed), "The Goals of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Goals of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zimmer, Daniel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857936608

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Economic Content of Competition Law: The Point of Regulating Preferences

Author(s): Künzler, Adrian

Number of pages: 32

Extract:

10. Economic content of competition
law: the point of regulating
preferences
Adrian Künzler* 41




1 INTRODUCTION

Over the last few decades the criteria governing the application of EC
Competition Law have been subjected to substantial changes. Apart from
procedure, through the enactment of Regulation 1/2003, they have pre-
dominantly concerned substance through a wider recourse to economic
analysis. As a result of this process, the same basic aims of competition
law have been questioned: while in the past EC competition law was seen
as squarely directed at the protection of the competitive process ­ or
the protection of the freedom to compete ­ there is now a tendency for
restrictions of competition to be appraised more and more by efficiency
criteria such as social or consumer welfare, efficient allocation of produc-
tion factors or, in short, their economic outcomes. Under this approach,
the purpose of rules against private restraints on competition would
consist solely of maximizing economic welfare. Therefore competition
restraints would be assessed with reference to their impacts on economic
welfare. If welfare is diminished then the practice under assessment
should be prohibited; otherwise, i.e., if welfare is increased or in cases of
welfare-economic neutrality ­ or indeed uncertainty ­ the practice must
be declared permissible.
Hence the striving for a `more economic approach' embodies the
quest for an `economically correct competition policy', or a `more
objective approach'. The maximization of economic welfare is deemed
to be the supreme objective of the law against private restraints on



* Branco Weiss ...