Parallel Enforcement and Accountability: The Case of EU Competition Law

Abstract

EU competition law is enforced parallel by the EU Commission and 28 national competition authorities (NCAs) in a multi-level governance system composed of EU and national procedural laws. Regulation 1/2003 established the European Competition Network (ECN) in order to coordinate parallel proceedings between the Commission and the NCAs. This chapter analyses the shared enforcement of EU competition law from the perspective of political and judicial accountability. The chapter focuses on the accountability of the Commission, the NCAs and the ECN in their role of/as main actors of the shared enforcement. Two jurisdictions are used to illustrate the role and powers of the NCAs: the Netherlands and Hungary. After analysis of the powers and roles of the three respective actors (the Commission, the NCAs and the ECN) of parallel enforcement, section 3 examines judicial and political accountability and section 4 concludes.

Keywords: EU Competition Law, Accountability, Multi-Level Governance, Parallel Enforcement