The European Inquisitor - The Application of Right of Defence by Central and Eastern European NCAs

During the past few years, a number of practitioners have criticised DG Competition for not providing sufficient guarantees of right of defence. By comparing the application of the right of defence by the National Competition Authorities (NCAs) from seven EU member states, this article aims to show that the procedural safeguards offered by DG Competition provide a higher level of protection of parties’ right of defence. In other words, the European Commission is not the worst “inquisitor” in Europe. Secondly, the article discusses whether a legislative harmonisation of national procedural rules in this area would be desirable, including analysis of the draft Directive published by the European Commission in March 2017 to harmonise the enforcement powers of NCAs, the ECN+ Directive. At the time of writing, the representatives of the Council and the European Parliament have recently achieved a political agreement concerning a shared text of the legislation. The Directive, however, still needs to be approved by both legislative bodies and later transposed by the EU member states