The Europeanization of British Competition Policy

Introduction Competition policy presents an interesting case of Europeanization, given that the two classic channels which promote the convergence of national regulations in the EU (that is, negative, market-related regulatory competition on the one hand, and positive, state-led harmonization on the other) does not apply to this policy domain (van Waarden and Drahos, 2002: 913). In terms of positive pressure, while applicant states are expected to introduce EU-inspired/compatible competition laws such requirement has been imposed on those states that are already full members. Indeed, when the European Economic Community was set up in the late 1950s, only the Federal Republic of Germany's competition regime came anywhere close to the European model. Nevertheless, national competition policies evolved after 1958, and in many instances – in Italy and Sweden, for example, they have come to resemble those of the European Union (even if they are far from identikit 1 In the case of the UK 2 , a competition policy evolved from the late 1940s on. It was only in 1998 that a comprehensive revision to the postwar competition policy settlement was undertaken. The conventional wisdom is that these recent reforms embodied a Europeanization of the UK competition regime. Kon and Turnbull (2003: 70), for example, note that 'The UK Competition Act 1998 came into force on March 1, 2000 and brought the UK competition regime into line with the existing Community rules.' Claims such as these make sense when we look at the content of the 1998 Competition Act. But to what extent have these reforms really been 1 Eyre and Lodge (2000: 65) note that this has been a process that has been easier in countries where there was no or little tradition of competition policy, the corollary being that in the UK and Germany, where there has been a well-developed post-1945 policy, the adaptation process has been more arduous. Drahos (2001) notes that the extent of convergence has been impressive given the lack of top-down pressure. She identifies four channels of influence of EU competition law: compliance costs where regimes differ; policy learning; some direct constraints on national legislation; and the constraints and incentives on the application of national law arising out of the supremacy of EC norms. 2 In the context of this particular article, UK and British are used interchangeably. There is no assumption that 'British' implies the exclusion of Northern Ireland. The issue of British competition …