17 Dec 2024 • Articles

What is an exclusionary abuse?

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Jorge Padilla authored an article discussing exclusionary abuse, for the fourth edition of Concurrences 'On-Topic' publication. In the article, Jorge critically reviews the European Commission’s Draft Guidelines on exclusionary abuse under Article 102 TFEU, highlighting sound economic reasoning and suggesting improvements.

Introduction

In this short essay, I critically review the notion of exclusionary abuse in the Commission’s draft Guidelines on the application of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to abusive exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings (“Draft Guidelines”)1 from an economic viewpoint.2

There are many statements in the Draft Guidelines that make sense as a matter of economics, but there are also areas of improvement, in my opinion. 

Whether the improvements I propose are feasible or not from a legal perspective is above my pay cheque. However, I hope they are, because there is no justification for maintaining regulations that make society worse off.3

Read the full edition here (subscription required)

References

  1. Draft Guidelines on the application of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to abusive exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings (2024).

  2. I do not comment on whether the Draft Guidelines are faithfully aligned with the case law that they purport to summarize, as that would be beyond my area of expertise.

  1. See J. Padilla, The “Crisis” of Antitrust Economics, Oxford Review of Economic Policy (forthcoming 2024).

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