Promoting Competition: European Union and the Global Competition Order

Competition policy refers to a set of laws and policies that aim to ensure that competition in the marketplace is not restricted, such as laws that prohibit agreements to keep prices artificially high or markets segmented. In the last few decades, we have witnessed a proliferation of national competition laws, regional and bilateral cooperation agreements and efforts at multilateral cooperation on competition issues. The European Union has been an important player shaping these developments being one of the strongest competition authorities in the world. In this paper, I investigate the role of the EU in shaping developments on competition policy at the international level. While the EU’s attempts at creating a truly global competition order through the World Trade Organization failed, the EU continues to ‘export’ its competition regime to its economic partners through bilateral and regional agreements, and informal dialogue with competition authorities around the world. This paper explores the conditions under which the EU’s attempts at internationalizing competition policy have been successful