Veritas, Auctorictas Lex nella disciplina europea della concorrenza

How much has changed the law of the markets in the great transformation that has altered the anthropological meaning of exchange? Just a little, if we accept the archetypical image of the market as a “locus naturalis” governed by the principles of free access and free negotiation, a space in which the law is limited to guaranteeing the regularity of exchanges. In more recent times, an opposite image has been elaborated: namely of the market as “locus artificialis”. Space no longer governed by customary (spontaneous) law, but by a law to guarantee its functioning. Naturalness and artificiality are always present, to varying degrees, in the law of markets. Paradigmatic, from this point of view, is the approach of the Union’s legal system to the demands of the new lex mercatoria to enforce the rules produced directly by international trade operators. For the European institutions, the system that guarantees effective competition is no longer the one that protects the (static) freedom of trade of all its citizens, but that which pursues the (dynamic) objective of promoting allocative and productive efficiency of markets and companies for the purpose of maximizing consumer Welfare