Competition & Competences

One of the great challenges to any kind of divided powers systems is how governmental competences shall be shared among a central federal of transnational authority and the governments of, in the case of the EU, the Member States.

Competition & Competences addresses the question of what may be considered as a clash between competences, namely the EU's interests within the field of competition, and the Member States' interests within the field of regulation. The tensions existing between European competition law and anticompetitive measures of the Member States have by the European Court of Justice been attempted accommodated with reference to Articles 3(g), 5(2) and 85 of the Treaty.

Competition & Competences takes its point of departure in the case law concerned with these provisions and analyses the many fascinating problems related to the tensions between the two levels of governance. In addition, this book has as its aim a search for legal principles ensuring the coherence of two levels of governance in the examined field of law. This aim is fulfilled, among others, by reference to the American state action doctrine and theories of economics and political science.