Now also available as eBook

Focusing on the rules safeguarding procedural due process in the administrative procedures of the Commission, this fully updated edition of a widely used handbook covers the four principal fields that entail enforcement of substantive competition rules: antitrust, merger, anti-dumping/antisubsidies, and State aid. Among the many practical issues raised are the following:

• the right of directly involved parties to bring an action before the European Courts in merger,

• anti-dumping/anti-subsidies, and State-aid cases;

• the rights of complainants in antitrust cases;

• the rights and obligations of beneficiaries in State-aid cases;

• the extent to which the right to confidential communication between lawyer and client in thesecases is recognised by the European Commission and the European Courts;

• the right to silence to avoid self-incrimination in antitrust cases;

• the right to respect for confidentiality and the right to be heard during the preliminary factfinding procedure of the Commission;

• the obligations of an undertaking during the fact-finding procedure of the Commission;

• the right of access to the Commission’s file;

• the right to a fair hearing of all the parties concerned by the Commission proceedings; and

• the applicability of Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to EU antitrust procedures.

Three tables consolidate briefly and comparatively the rights and the obligations of the private parties in the four proceedings, as well as their right to bring an action before the European Courts. These tables give the reader the opportunity to easily check out what is the situation in the four proceedings regarding a specific right or obligation.

The author’s analysis draws on all the relevant judgments of the European Courts, and the book comes with a wealth of reference material, including detailed footnotes, lists of legislation and cases in both chronological and alphabetical order, and an extensive bibliography.

This extraordinarily useful book will be very handy in planning the handling of a case, as it describes the procedure and the rights and obligations of all parties from first to last. Law firms specialising in European competition law, Commission judges and case-handlers, and lawyers defending enterprises are among the practitioners who will benefit greatly by using this book. As the only book that contains an in-depth analysis of the rights and obligations of the parties in all the four fields and in a comparative perspective, it is also uniquely valuable to jurists and academics.