ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the situation where efficiency and market power consequences co-exist, and to consider possible solutions by comparison between the American anti-trust conception and the principles inherent in the Rome Treaty of the European Economic Community. It examines the efficiency defence and to see whether it may have real importance for the anti-trust policies of the United States and the Common Market. The chapter also analyses the legal and judicial approach to the efficiency defence and sees how strictly it has been applied in the US and the European Economic Community (EEC). The role of anti-trust law, in the EEC as well as in the US, must be limited to attacks upon those structures and conduct which induce market power. The chapter suggests that an efficiency defence, to have meaning, must correspond to the concept of the consumer welfare defence. It concludes that the Court should not accept economies as a defence to illegality.
