The EU and Anticompetitive Practices

Abstract

The process of globalization in recent decades has changed dramatically the nature of international business and the actors that shape it in at least four ways that are relevant to the themes of this book. First, firms have become huge in terms of global revenues and assets. This growth in size has been driven in large part by a second feature — a shift from a bifurcated global economy during the Cold War to an integrated global market and supply chain over the past quarter century that includes almost every country in the world. Third, globalization has been driven by technological innovation which allows firms that develop cutting-edge products to seize a first-mover advantage in many markets around the world, often leaving competitors scrambling to catch up. The rapidity of technological change and the fluidity of competition in international business in general combine to form the fourth development — how to regulate firms and markets to ensure fair competition. This is a challenge not just for the European Union (EU) but also for antitrust regulators around the world. With goods, services, and corporate strategies changing so quickly, how should governments respond to concerns that some companies may become so powerful as to inhibit competitors from having a chance at being successful, too? This is the question that is at the heart of regulating anticompetitive practices.