ABSTRACT
This chapter dismisses the widespread myth that the foundation of competition law in the EU was simply through the importation of US antitrust laws to post-war Germany, and points to a tradition of creating laws to protect markets in Europe for over two millennia. Laws governing trade and competition have an ancient history among European countries. In the Roman city-state c.50 bce, under the Lex Julia de Annona, laws were enacted to control the price and distribution of corn, with fines levied on anyone interfering with trade. After hostilities had ceased in 1918, competition law began to permeate peacetime Europe, with a particular focus on curbing cartels. The involvement of Vernon in the framing of the European Coal and Steel Community rules of trade is probably responsible for the myth that competition law was imported wholesale to Europe by the Americans by way of Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War.
