Our Submission to the European Commission on Article 102 Gudelines

We welcome the Commission’s draft guidelines on Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and consider it an important step in reinvigorating effective enforcement of a key competition tool for controlling increasing economic power. Strong enforcement of this tool is essential for reining in the threats posed by powerful corporations. 

In our submission on 31 October 2024, we argue that the draft guidelines need to be strengthened. For example:

• Explicit guidance should also be set out for exploitative abuses. Increasing economic concentration means exploitative abuses are an increasing concern because they are easier to inflict in a concentrated market and because much of the harm comes from extraction.

• The draft guidelines should look to incorporate standard accounting and financial analysis (AFA) as an analytical tool. AFA is better able to measure excess profits or predatory pricing, where industrial organisation economics has had limited results.

Please see here for our full submission.