Insurance companies and insurance activities are subject to profuse industry regulation, justified by potential market failures, but this does not exclude the applicability to them of Competition Law. Nevertheless, almost all legal systems worldwide foresee, one way or another, significant...

The use of soft law instruments is pervasive in the field of EU competition policy. This poses significant legal challenges derived from the progressive ‘hardening’ of these regulatory tools by the European Courts as a result of the application of the general principles of EU law. The...

Procurement activities conducted by the public buyer are very relevant for the proper working of the markets. Hence, the market activities of the public buyer should comply with the requirements of competition law - ie should not restrict or distort competitive outcomes derived from free market...

This paper focuses on the treatment of public procurement activities under EC competition law. After briefly outlining the competition economics of public procurement, the paper shows the perceived shortcomings of current EC competition rules and case-law to effectively tackle publicly-generated...

Public procurement and competition law are both important fields of EU law and policy, intimately intertwined in the creation of the internal market. Hitherto their close connection has been noted, but not closely examined. Th is work is the most comprehensive attempt to date to explain the many...

The relevance of effective competition in the public procurement setting can hardly be overstated, particularly in terms of value for money and system efficiency. However, the assessment of competition impacts (or distortions) derived from procurement still does not always rank on top of public...

This chapter aims to identify the key areas where EU competition law is relevant from a public procurement perspective: that is, mainly, the prevention and sanctioning of procurement manipulation by suppliers (bid rigging) and the granting of distortive State aid that advantages some of them...

The interaction between competition law and public procurement has been gaining visibility in recent years. This contribution claims that these two bodies of EU economic law mainly intersect at two points, or in two different dimensions. Firstly, they touch each other at the need to tackle...

The Supreme Court Judgment of 29 January 2008 was delivered in an appeal in the interest of law against a fine imposed by the Catalonian regional antitrust authority, which was annulled by an Administrative Judge. That judgment made relevant considerations concerning the need for sensitivity in...