THE EC COMMISSION'S GUIDANCE PAPER ON THE APPLICATION OF ARTICLE 82 EC: AN EFFICIENT MEANS OF COMPLIANCE FOR GERMANY?

The article focuses on the European Commission's guidance paper (GP) and the relevance and effectiveness of reforming Article 82 through a soft-law tool, and whether the GP demonstrates an effective means of compliance for Germany. The EU aspires to launch GP's features that will analyze concepts such as consumer welfare, anti-competitive foreclosure, and consumer harm. It discusses how the GP could be professed from the viewpoint of German competition law and policy, and the kind of transitional regime required for an effective completion of its main analytical concepts. It notes that it is therefore important to come up an overall balance between both the efficiencies and competitive-harm policy when enforcing Article 82 despite all the criticism.