Aspectos sustanciales y procesales de la cooperación en la Red Europea de autoridades de competencia

Abstract

As a result of the decentralization of the EC antitrust policy, a harmonization and inter-agency cooperation forum has been structured in Europe named European Competition Network, erected to promote the links between national and community administrative institutions responsible for protecting the competition in the common market. The above-mentioned forum has fulfilled its task for 10 years thanks to a catalog of instruments that in addition to promoting linkages, prevents that double and inappropriate allocations of resources arise. In that regard, this paper expounds the aforementioned cooperation and coordination mechanisms, taking special notice to their most relevant procedural and substantive features, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses that have arisen in its time of validity, and also the alterations that brings to its implementation the participation of the European Commission, as central and preeminent authority of the EC antitrust.