EU Competition Law
As the complexities of the business world multiply and commerce becomes increasingly global, the need to understand issues of antitrust law — commonly referred to as "competition law" in the European Union — becomes more important. A web of international rules poses significant dangers for both intentional and inadvertent competition-law violations. As a result, businesses and their employees may become afraid to be inventive, aggressive and competitive in completely legitimate ways.
Thus, it is crucial that organisations doing business in the EU and/or with EU member states train their employees on the what, why and how of competition-law enforcement: (1) what the basic legal principles are, and what problems can occur in the real world in dealings with colleagues, customers, competitors, suppliers and business partners; (2) why compliance with competition law is important to your organisation's business goals and the free-enterprise system in general, and why avoiding violations and civil and criminal penalties is so important; and (3) how to recognize potential problems and deal with them appropriately, and how to compete creatively and legitimately.
Course Summary
This one-hour course explains the basic principles of EU competition law in simple, understandable terms. It includes pop-quizzes, news clippings and a final quiz highlighting real-world compliance issues that employees should learn to recognize and respond to appropriately.
The topics covered in the course include —
- Introduction to the European Union
- EU institutions
- Enforcement of competition law
- Consequences of non-compliance
- Overview of EU competition law
- Article 101 TFEU: purpose and rationale
- What is an anti-competitive agreement?
- Consequences of Article 101 violations
- Recognising "red flags"
- Relationships with competitors
- Cartels, price-fixing, market-sharing, etc.
- Vertical agreements
- Verticals Block Exemption Regulation
- Resale price maintenance, market-partitioning, etc.
- Relationships with licensees
- Article 102 TFEU: abuse of market dominance
- Investigation and enforcement
- "Dawn raids"
- Leniency programme
- The need for "careful communication"
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