Comparative Competition Law Erasmus+ Module

I am delighted to share that, based on feedback collected anonymously via an online form, decisive majority of students find this module intellectually stimulating and challenging, with ALL considering that the class is interactive and encourages participation.

What do students enjoy most? Here are some unredacted comments:

‘Interactive Sessions and I feel really motivated and involved in class. Also, some intellectual humour to the module works absolutely perfect. I think I have made the best decision to be a part of this class and may even consider taking it up for my dissertation.’

‘Interactivity and diversity of materials used (videos, graphs, stats, articles)’

‘Class very well-prepared, amazing motivation of the Professor, pleasant atmosphere where everyone can participate’

‘The activities where you have to research subjects in the class and answer them on OneNote to share them with everyone’

‘Group interaction and challenging discussions’

What are some of the basic take home lessons from this for staff? Students appreciate opportunities to engage. They seek to and benefit from contributing and interacting, both in class and outside the classroom. Diverse teaching methods and aids, as well as technology can facilitate it. Althought all this requires considerable upfront planning and preparing for diverse outcomes, it can positively impact on students engagement with the module content, develop their interest and curiosity—leading, hopefully, to better educational outcomes.

PS: I enocurage all colleagues to run in-semester anonymous evaluations to seek students’ feedback.

We are delighted to share that our School received a Jean Monnet Module plaque- ‘a label signifying quality in European integration studies’. It follows a last year Jean Monnet Erasmus+ award enabling development of this new module in Comparative Competition Law.

Our School has been considerably successful when it comes to Jean Monnet actions. In past, my colleague Professor Dagmar Schiek has been awarded a Jean Monnet Ad Personam Chair in European Law. Moreover, our School hosted a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, led by Dagmar, which now continues as a Centre of European and Transnational Studies.

This week we were honoured to host a guest speaker—Professor Tadashi Shiraishi from the University of Tokyo. Professor Shiraishi delivered a guest lecture outlining and analysing exploitative abuses in competition law from the EU, US and Japanese perspectives. The presentation holistically built on our in class work so far with a variety of interlinkages to past discussions in class. It also nicely laid groundwork for a subsequent group exercise concerning claims raises in relation to conduct of high-tech firms.

ありがとうございました!

This week we were delighted to benefit from a guest appearance of Dr Yichen Yang, from the Sichuan University, who outlined to students the Chinese competition system from a comparative perspective. Dr Yang started by contextualising the introduction of competition law in China. She then analysed the Chinese institutional design as well as the key substantive rules. She also addressed the questions of how the Chinese system learnt from the EU regime and explored the challenges facing both China and the EU in this area of law.

We are truly delighted to advertise a guest lecture by Dr Bogdan Chirițoiu, Chairman of the Romanian Competition Council. Dr Chirițoiu will visit Queen’s in March. He will speak about the latest developments in the competition law case law as well as about the cooperation within the European Competition Network. All are welcome!

Please register @ http://go.qub.ac.uk/cBfbc

 

Last week we had fist of our special movie watching session in the course of this module. We’ve seen the Informant!, a movie about uncovering and investigation of the international lysine price-fixing cartel in the United States. One just could not have a more appropriate movie made for this class, in terms of touching upon a whole range if relevant legal issues.

If you missed this session: a DVD with the Informant! is available in our University’s Library on a one night loan.

Interestingly, some of the original recordings made by the FBI in that criminal investigation have been made publicly available and can be found online (for example, see here). We’ve seen them in class as well. They are a real eye-opener as to the nature of the cartel meetings, its agenda and the attitudes of the individuals involved. Enjoy!

 

 

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!).