ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Commission's legislative efforts to give the competition rules the precision and the flexibility. The two main characteristics of the competition rules are: a comprehensive character and a potential for flexibility. This comprehensive character signifies that the competition rules do not contain any loop holes nor what one might call blind angles. The admission of new market participants is now no longer in the hands of existing operators, but is decided upon by the competent public authorities. As a legal technique, emphasis on effects is not limited to the competition sector. However, such problems are the inevitable price to pay in a legal order which aims at permanency in changing economic and social circumstances. As a result, the Commission is entitled but even positively obliged to give due consideration to the social and conjunctural circumstances in which it operates its competition policy. The chapter explores the impression that the competition rules of the Treaty are basically severe.
