Topics are wide-ranging: from the jurisdictional and procedural aspects such as the relationship between EC competition law and domestic competition law and the evolving co-operation between the European Commission and local competition authorities in the decentralized enforcement of EC antitrust norms in the light of the reform mooted in the recent White Paper on the modernization of the implementing rules; to generic substantive antitrust issues such as the effect that the US Kodak aftermarkets theory and related European cases have had on the definition of a dominant position and the effect that such aftermarkets scenarios have on consumers’ costs, the contribution of the modern economic game theory to the antitrust analysis of collusive behaviour in oligopoly contrasted with the approach taken by the ECJ and the Italian Competition Authority to the detection of collusion in oligopolistic settings, merger control as it has evolved in France and Italy considered from a comparative perspective and contrasted with the Community merger control system, the recent reform concerning vertical restraints and the legality of standard form contracts and exchange of information from an EC and national competition law perspective; to the more specific sector-related antitrust issues such as the application of US antitrust laws to the media industry, the liberalization of the telecommunications, energy and transport sectors through Community-wide regulatory initiatives and application of general antitrust norms by enforcement authorities, the antitrust approach to parallel trading in pharmaceutical products, the approach taken by the European Commission in the insurance sector block exemption deemed too rigid by two of the conference participants in the face of newly developing forms of insurance as opposed to the more liberal and dynamic US approach; and the application of competition law to modern forms of mass distribution such as supermarkets and hypermarkets. Even the EC state aids regime is considered – in the specific context of the transport and energy sectors and more generally with a focus on the remedies available to competitors at Community and national level.

The papers seek to portray recent developments in these highly topical issues, and although the papers were written in 1999, some were revised to take into account developments up to the date of publication. Of course like all books on competition law, the book will quickly be overtaken by new developments (for instance the papers on vertical restraints were written before the relevant block exemption and guidelines were published) but as a work that highlights the issues faced by enforcement authorities in the application of EC and national antitrust rules particularly in the media, telecommunications, insurance, energy, transport and pharmaceutical sectors, it is bound to remain a valuable source of information for academics, practitioners and students working or researching in this field.

Particularly noteworthy is that some of the papers discuss various national (particularly Italian and French) cases where the local competition authority applied EC competition rules or the domestic law, and occasionally contrast such decisions with EC or US case law. While books discussing EC and US antitrust cases are widely available, there is relatively little information about the case law of some of the EU Member States. This is unfortunate since, as the enforcement of EC competition law is further decentralized and European competition laws become further aligned to the EC model and harmonized with each other, it is useful and instructive to look at the way such rules are interpreted and applied by the various national competition and judicial authorities.

The reader must be conversant with three languages to be able to appreciate fully this book, as more than half of the papers (11) are written in Italian while the rest are in English (6) and French (3).