Economic Efficiency: the Sole Concern of Modern Antitrust Policy?

Over the past decade, we have witnessed an apparent convergence of views among competition agency officials in the European Union and the United States on the appropriate goals of competition law enforcement. Antitrust policy, it is now suggested, should focus on enhancing economic efficiency, which we are to believe will promote consumer welfare. Recent EU Commission Guidelines on the application of Article 101 TFEU appear to banish considerations that cannot be construed as having an...
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Over the past decade, we have witnessed an apparent convergence of views among competition agency officials in the European Union and the United States on the appropriate goals of competition law enforcement. Antitrust policy, it is now suggested, should focus on enhancing economic efficiency, which we are to believe will promote consumer welfare. Recent EU Commission Guidelines on the application of Article 101 TFEU appear to banish considerations that cannot be construed as having an economic efficiency value - such as the environment, cultural policy, employment, public health, and consumer protection - from the application of Article 101 TFEU. Arguing that the professed adoption of an exclusive efficiency approach to Article 101 TFEU does not preclude, but rather obfuscates the role of non-efficiency considerations, the author of this timely contribution accomplishes the following objectives: traces the genesis of the shift to an efficiency orientation in EU and US antitrust policy and dispels several ingrained misconceptions that underpin it; demonstrates the close interrelationship between evolving images of the purpose of antitrust, the development of related enforcement norms, and enforcement output; provides in-depth analyses of a number of analytically rich cases in the audiovisual sector (and particularly those related to sports rights); and explores what the role of non-efficiency considerations in the application of Article 101 TFEU could and should be under the modernized enforcement regime.