CES Interior Competition Policy:ces
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European Competition Policy
competitors, and hence will greatly help the authority exert that competition advocacy function which is necessary to implement its pro-competitive activity.
6 Recommendations In this study, we have presented and extensively analysed an economics-based approach to competition policy. This approach represents a consistent and general framework for EU policymakers to design future competition policy and to reform existing policies in Europe.
6.1 Why adopt the economics-based approach to competition policy? • European policymakers should pursue and promote the economics-based approach to competition policy. This approach defines consumer welfare as the unique operational standard on which competition policy is based, meaning that a business practice implemented by a corporation should be considered as anti-competitive and banned if and only if it harms consumer welfare. • In the current checklist approach followed by the EU, in contrast, a business practice is banned if it falls within a pre-established list of conducts that can be considered as anti-competitive. As a result, in the current approach a practice is judged more on the basis of the commercial and legal form that it takes than on the basis of its economic
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