On Periodization of EU Antitrust Development: Are We in a New Phase?

Abstract

The more than sixty-year long history of the competition policy and law of the European integration naturally invites a step by step interpretation working with some meaningful time segments that would highlight changing trends and determining priorities of different phases of its development. Besides having an intellectual and pedagogical contribution, such a segmentation of historical development could help to discern what among the recent events in the field of competition policy and law – from which we do not have sufficient distance – would likely be the new milestones shaping its future. After outlining possible criteria for identifying the milestones of the EU antitrust development the paper concludes that we already are in a different phase of development than the neo-liberal modernization of EU antitrust, although there has been no sudden break, but rather a gradual adaptation – sometimes involuntary – of modernization ideas to new conditions.

Keywords: European union, competition policy and law, historical development, European Commission