Institutional Design and Decision-Making Processes in European Competition Laws and

remained largely unchanged since the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community and 1957 European Economic Community Treaties, despite the various modifications of the constitutive Treaties.1 Article 101 (1) of the TFEU2 prohibits agreements, concerted practices and decisions of associations of undertakings that have as their object or effect to restrict competition and affect trade between Member States. In addition, Article 101(3) contains a “legal exception ” to the sanction of nullity provided for otherwise unlawful practices, subject to the fulfilment of its four conditions, i.e. that they contribute to improve the production or distribution of goods or to promote technical or economic progress, while allowing consumers a fair share of the resulting benefit and do not impose on the undertakings concerned restrictions which are not indispensable to the attainment of these objectives or do not afford such undertakings the possibility of eliminating competition in respect of a substantial part of the products in question. In addition, in a multi-layered context such as that of the EU, each Member State has enacted its own competition rules and set up its own institutional arrangements within which to enforce them. According to Article 105 TFEU, the European Commission is the agency primarily responsible for their application:3however, the 2003 Modernisation Regulation has marked