Cooperation Between Antitrust Agencies at the International Level

This book addresses the issue of international antitrust enforcement, focusing on bilateral co-operation between antitrust agencies, in particular the European Commission and the US agencies. It first shows how bilateral co-operation was developed as a response to the limits of the unilateral and extraterritorial application of national competition laws, and how it has evolved from an instrument initially designed to avoid conflicts into a tool aimed at co-ordinating joint investigations of international competition cases. It then considers how bilateral co-operation could be optimally used, by analysing two forms of advanced co-operation: the exchange of confidential information and positive comity, which is the only satisfactory answer competition law can provide to market access cases. It shows that the use of such instruments is limited by significant legal and political obstacles, even in the context of the exemplary EC-US relationship.