Comparative Competition Law Erasmus+ Module

In these difficult time the University switched to fully online provision. Our University key delivery platform will be now Microsoft Teams. Our first class went very well and we managed to continue with good in-class engagement which was great. In more general terms, in our class switching to fully online teaching is somewhat easier thanks to our embracement of OneNote Classroom from the start of the semester. OneNote Classroom allows for a variety of interactions in and outside the classroom. During our first fully online class we did engage in some group work using OneNote and it do pretty well, probably since we were all early familiar with that platform. Now it is time to further develop our skills on this end.

Last Tuesday the School hosted project’s Annual Public High Profile Guest Lecture. This year we were honored to host Dr Mirta Kapural, Member of the Croatian Competition Council.

The lecture was well attended, bringing together students from across the levels in the School as well as external participants, inclusive of prominent local practitioners and academics, also from beyond Northern Ireland.

In her talk Dr Kapural outlined the operation of the Croatian competition system and the competition agency itself. She also mapped out and analysed a variety of challenges facing enforcers nowadays. The talk met with considerable interest of participants, leading to very active and engaging Q&A session.

On Thursday we had the great pleasure to host an open seminar delivered by Professor Sayako Takizawa from Tohoku University in Japan. Professor Takizawa spoke about the challenges and practicalities of regulating powerful digital platforms from a comparative perspective. She analysed the recent developments in relation to Facebook in Germany as well as the recenlty issued soft law in this area in Japan. The seminar was well attended by a range of students and some external attendees.

Yesterday, students had a terrific opportunity to benefit from a special guest lecture delivered by Professor Sofia Pais, Jean Monnet Chair at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto, Portugal. The class focused on the important issue of abuse of dominance.

As always the class included a fusion of analysis of substantive issues and in-class exercises, this time in the form of examination of relevant recent case law.

I am delighted to share that this semester we have a very engaging and diverse group of students from all over the world, with variety of educational backgrounds and career plans. Needless to say, this greatly contributes to very positive class dynamics.

So far, substantively, we managed to cover competition laws aims, key institutional aspects and modes of enforcement. And—of course—there was a Brexit’s special, on practical consequences of Brexit in this area of law. In terms of methods, we had numerous discussions, quite a bit of in-class group work (also with the use of our online collaborative classroom) and we even listened to a recording of a court hearing.

Now we are looking forward to our first guest lecture scheduled for next week—with Professor Sofia Pais from Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto, Portugal.

Next week the new semester starts for our postgraduate students. For students taking this Erasmus+ Comparative Competition Law module this will be some exciting time, with a variety of interactive activities and exercises in the weeks to come.

We are delighted to announce that the highlights of the semester include:

• Public Guest Lecture by Ms Mirta Kapural, Member of the Competition Council of Croatia,
• Guest Lectures by Professor Sofia O. Pais (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto, Portugal) and Professor Rupprecht Podszun (Universität Düsseldorf, Germany),
• Guest Seminar by Professor Sayako Takizawa (Tohoku Univeristy, Japan).

These will be truly unique opportunities to hear from some of the leaders of the competition community internationally. We are delighted in the School of Law to be able to host these visits.

We’re pleased to let you know that in the most recent issue of the Reflections (ie Dec 2019) there is an article sharing some of knowhow of using OneNote in the scope of this module to encourage students engagement in and outside classroom.

It is freely available online at: https://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/AcademicStudentAffairs/CentreforEducationalDevelopment/CoursesEventsProfessionalRecognition/Publications/ReflectionsIssues/Filetoupload,940279,en.pdf

Reflections is a journal focusing on teaching, learning and assessment in Queen’s and more generally in higher education. It is published once a semester by the Centre for Educational Development and is a vehicle for members of staff to discuss new approaches to teaching and supporting learning. Reflections also provides news and updates on learning and teaching events and initiatives within Queen’s.

We are looking forward to a visit of Dr Wendy Ng from the University of Melbourne. Wendy is going to deliver a guest talk, entitled ‘Does technical assistance matter in legal transplantation? A case study of competition law in ASEAN’. She will draw from her ongoing empirical project involving numerous interviews in the relevant jurisdictions. We are very happy that Wendy accepted our invitation. It is a rare opportunity to learn more about implementation of competition law within the context of the leading Asian regional integration project.

The semiar is scheduled on Thursday, 13th June, from 2 to 3 PM. The venue is room 9.022 in the Law School Tower.

All are welcome!

Next Thursday, on 9th May (ie Europe Day), our Centre for European and Transnational Studies will be hosting a guest talk by Professor Francisco Marcos from IE Business School (Madrid, Spain). Francisco will talk about private enforcement of competition law and damages claims in the European Union. This is a very topical issue– following the adoption of the damages directive private actions are gaining momentum in the EU, with some interesting forum-competition between EU Member States.

The talk is scheduled from 1 to 2 pm in room 9.022 in the Law School.

All are welcome!

This week we were privileged to host Dr Bogdan Chirițoiu, Chairman of Competition Council of Romania. Dr Chirițoiu delivered a guest lecture about challenges of competition law enforcement and cooperation within the European Competition Network. Some of the highlight included discussion of the evolution of Romanian enforcement and some insights into practical aspects of dealing with transnational violations (inclusive of having dawn raids executed by competition agencies in other EU member states).

The lecture met with considerable interests. Apart from our LLM students, doctoral candidates, faculty members as well as some civil servants were in attendance.

We are very grateful for Dr Chirițoiu’s visit. Mulțumesc!

Romania is currently holding the Presidency of Council of the European Union. To learn more about the Romanian Presidency see here.