ABSTRACT
Many, although not all, of the recent developments in Community law enforcement stemmed from the problems encountered by the Commission in performing its central task of supervising and applying the competition rules. Many of those fundamental problems have now been addressed, to some extent, by Regulation 1/2003 and the introduction of the ECN. While it remains to be seen how that network will operate, and if the decentralisation of competition enforcement causes more problems than it solves, the enforcement debate has now moved on. Some of the issues which are currently being debated within the enforcement field include: (a) the expansion of the Community, which will increase the importance of consistent
application of Community law, given that several new Member States have recently liberalised economies, and the uncertainties surrounding the operation of the new ECN;
(b) the rights of the defence are increasingly important – there have already been major developments in this area with substantial improvements in inquiry procedures, particularly in relation to the issues of access to files and the role of the hearing officer, but the increasing number of legal challenges to Commission Decisions in the Community Courts, focusing on procedural issues and the rights of the defence mean that further developments are inevitable; and
(c) the debate surrounding the criminalisation of certain ‘hard core’ cartel activities – with criminal sanctions being introduced in a number of Member States there is ongoing controversy surrounding the relationship between criminal prosecutions under domestic law and Community enforcement measures.
