Month: January 2019

On Tuesday we had our first class in Comparative Competition Law with a lot of active engagement and good energy in the room. The class is nicely diversified with students from both Northern Ireland and further afield (including from a variety of countries and different legal systems)—allowing us to draw from students’ previous learning and personal experiences. One of the things we did during our first class was enabling and using our new online platform—OneNote Classroom—for collaborative in-class engagement. We had so-facilitated group work with real-time results-sharing and it all worked very well.

Here’s to a great semester!

As the new semester is about to start next week for our postgraduate students, I thought it may be appropriate to note an interesting personal link between competition law (maybe even international competition law and free trade) and the Erasmus programme.

The Erasmus programme was initiated in the mid-1980s. The ‘education’ portfolio in the European Commission was then—only for one year— managed by Peter Sutherland, the Competition Commissioner.  During that short period, in 1986, Sutherland proposed and subsequently launched the Erasmus initiative, earning the unofficial title of the ‘father of Erasmus’. In fact, creation of the Erasmus programme was the policy initiative Sutherland was most proud of.

Peter Sutherland was Attorney General of Ireland from 1981 until 1984. Subsequently he became the youngest ever European Commissioner,  looking after the competition portfolio from 1985 until 1989.  Later on he became the founding Director-General of the World Trade Organization, from 1993 until 1995. Due to his leadership in the latter role he was often referred to as the ‘father of globalization’. In fact, Sutherland served as the chairman during the Uruguay round of trade negotiations leading to the creation of the WTO (photo: WTO website). These successful trade talks largely dealt with public barriers to trade—putting private barriers to trade in the limelight and making competition legislation only more relevant, contributing to its spread internationally.

I had the pleasure of meeting Peter Sutherland in 2011, during my doctoral studies in competition law at University College Dublin (hence the attached photo). Sutherland made a substantial leadership gift to UCD and the Law School at UCD, my doctoral alma mater, carries now his name.

Peter Sutherland passed away in January 2018.

PS: Peter Sutherland was also linked with Queen’s University. In 2003 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science (Economics) by our University.

The recent edition of the Economist, a liberal weekly, devoted two pieces to the phenomenon of extraterritoriality, that is application of domestic rules beyond the country’s shores. See here and here.

The extraterritoriality is by no means a new phenomenon. Competition law (or antitrust law, as it is called in the U.S.) was most likely the first area in which it has been relied on. The U.S. was its original enthusiast. Initially many countries opposed any such extraterritorial assertions by a variety of means—from diplomatic notes and amicus curiae interventions (see discussed here, if interested) to adopting legislation aimed to block the long-reach of U.S. law (see here). Nowadays, most developed countries rely to extraterritoriality in competition law whenever it is needed (see, for example, here and here).

Extraterritoriality is a rational unilateral response of the effected country to challenges posed by transnational activities which escape scrutiny in their home countries and/or at the multilateral level. Its continued relevance points to the need of further development of international collaboration. These are some of the topical issues which practical relevance continues– and which we are covering in the module in the context of competition law.

PS: I encourage any willing person to correct the Wikipedia entry on this topic. It mixes up two distinct concepts of extraterritoriality and exterritoriality. The former is a phenomenon of application of domestic laws beyond country’s shores. The latter refers certain diplomatic immunities enjoyed by foreign states and international organisations in a hosting jurisdiction. It does not help that Encyclopaedia Britannica mixes these two concepts as well (by talking about exterritoriality while using the term extraterritoriality, see here).

As the new semester approaches I was wondering whether I should assign a reading from what is one of the first books comparatively exploring competition law and the one doing so from the legal and economic perspectives– namely ‘Cartels and Trusts’ by Dr Roman Piotrowski— published in London in 1933.

In this book Piotrowski critically analysed history and development of anticompetitive agreements and their treatment in a range of jurisdictions. He has successfully challenged a false notion promoted by some scholars that such arrangements were a new phenomenon.

The book was an outcome of a three year long project investigating cartels and it does provide copious references to sources in English, German, French, Italian, Latin and Greek (hence, something few scholars would be able to do!).

 

 

We are delighted to let you know that Dr Yichen Yang, Lecturer in Law at the Sichuan University (China) accepted our invitation. Dr Yang will make a guest appearance in the Spring. She will outline the operation and functioning of the competition law system in the People’s Republic of China.