Regulating Cartels in Europe

One of the most contentious and high-profile aspects of EU competition law and policy has been the regulation of those serious competition or antitrust violations now often referred to as 'hard core cartels'. Such cartel activity typically involves large and powerful corporate producers and traders operating across Europe and beyond, and comprise practices such as price fixing, bid rigging, market sharing, and limiting production in order to ensure 'market stability' and maintain and increase profits. There is little disagreement now, in terms of competition theory and policy at both international and national levels, regarding the damaging effect of such trading practices on public and consumer interests, and such cartels have been subject to increasing condemnation in the legal process of regulating and protecting competition.

Regulating Cartels in Europe provides critical evaluation of the way in which European-level regulation has evolved to deal with the activities of such anti-competitive business cartels. They trace the historical development of cartel regulation in Europe, comparing the more pragmatic and empirical approached favored in Europe with the more dogmatic and uncompromising American policy on cartels. In particular, the work considers critically the move towards the use of fully fledged criminal proceedings in this area of legal control, examining evolving aspects of enforcement policy such as the use of leniency programs and the deployment of a range of criminal law and other sanctions.

This new edition of the work covers emerging themes and arguments in the discipline, including the judicial review of decisions against cartels, the criminological and legal basis of the criminalization of cartel conduct, and the range and effectiveness of sanctions used in response to cartel activity.

Christopher Harding is Professor of Law in the Department of Law and Criminology at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of numerous books including Criminal Enterprise: Individuals, Organisations and Criminal Responsibility (Willan, 2007) and, with Laurence Koffman, Sentencing and the Penal System: Text and Materials (2nd ed. Sweet and Maxwell, 1995). His teaching and research interests span the fields of European law, International law, penal and legal theory, and the history of crime and punishment.

Julian Joshua is a partner at Howrey Simon Arnold & White in Brussels. He brings a unique perspective as both an enforcement official for 27 years and now as a defence lawyer, and as a published writer and commentator on many aspects of cartel practice.

As a barrister and partner in the antitrust practice of Howrey LLP's Brussels office, he focuses on complex international cartel investigations before the European Commission. Nominated by professional journals as "a leader in the field of cartels work", he specializes in global antitrust investigations by multiple enforcement authorities.

As a European Commission cartel enforcer, he was the architect of the European Commission's investigation and enforcement mechanisms in complex cartel cases, including the "dawn raid" and the treatment of cartels as a conspiracy under the concept of the single continuous infringement. He led many successful investigations into Europe-wide price-fixing conspiracies in major industries and was the author of numerous seminal Commission decisions in the cartel area.