ever-increasing

the common thread

deliver for

underpins

set aside

ministerial

the competition authority

And so, under EU competition law, actions and agreements which re-create the boundaries between the member states may be deemed anti-competitive. While market integration is economic in nature, protecting the internal market may not always further a narrow economic concept of consumer welfare. In practice, this political goal has led to a focus on removing territorial restrictions that undermine the creation of the single market and dictates a rather restrictive view of agreements which could limit trade between member states or lead to market foreclosure.

By contrast to the US Sherman Act, EU legislation provides some indication as to the goals of competition law as it positions it within the wider goals of the Union.

scholarship

undermine

underlined

presumption

The Supreme Court interpreted the Sherman Act broadly to consider both economic and non-economic goals related to these monopolies. Non-economic goals included ‘indirect social or moral effects’, which made a system of small producers preferable, even where it caused economic inefficiencies. Interestingly, in the early days (page 32)p. 32enforcers also used the Sherman Act to target victims of market power, such as labour unions and their officers.