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This chapter examines European Economic Community competition law and reviews the basic shape of its development over the last four decades. It focuses on identifying the core elements and the dynamics of that experience. It considers the evolving relationship between Community and competition law and the competition laws of Member States, and assesses its importance for the future of competition law in Europe.

The European Union (EU) started out as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), an organization that was set up to control the levels of production in the coal and steel industries of Western Europe. In 1957, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands took a quantum leap forward in integrating their economic policies by agreeing to the Treaty of Rome. The Treaty contained a set of blueprints for ongoing cooperation on issues of trade, labor, capital movements, and monetary policy. It created the European Economic Community (EEC), a permanent organization in Brussels to promote this cooperation. There have also been newer Treaties which have changed several important features of the EU and its decision-making processes. One of the most remarkable things is that almost all European governments of all political persuasions have found the benefits of membership to be positive for their economies.

This chapter is structured around four questions: Why did the Europeans not achieve economic integration in the late 1940s and early 1950s? Why did the Federal Republic of Germany welcome the Benelux proposal in 1955 and make substantial concessions to France in order to establish the European Economic Community (EEC)? Why did the French agree to create a supranational common market so soon after rejecting the defense community and then carry through on their commitment? And why did the British initially join the discussions, quickly pull out, and then propose a competing European industrial free trade area (FTA) in October 1956, before finally seeking to associate their own economic grouping with the common market? It argues that these events are best understood as the product of balance of power politics. Specifically, the global distribution of power made European cooperation possible, and the major protagonists endorsed or refused integration based on balance of power calculations.

This chapter takes two of the values identified by the Constitutional Treaty — solidarity and equality/non-discrimination — and uses them as a prism through which to examine the extent to which the European Union now has a true ‘social’ face. It then considers the extent to which the European Union has sought to deal with concerns about social dumping, taking the developments in the field of free movement of services, and the issue of posted workers in particular, as an illustration. The chapter begins by examining the social provisions found in the European Economic Community Treaty at the time of its adoption in Rome in 1957 and those in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe adopted in Rome in 2004.

The various books on the competition and trade laws in the European Community rarely start out by introducing the need to study the law and culture of the European Union. Since November 1993, Title XII of the European Community Treaty has started looking into matters of culture. Because culture is recognized as a subject of trade, possesses a commercial value, and enables the sales of various services and goods, the rules set by the European Economic Community (EEC Treaty) — particularly those on competition, custom duties, and movement — have proven to have some effect on the cultural sphere. Through exploring the interaction between the culture and law of the European Union, this book aims to examine how and why culture is integrated within European Union law. Also, we identify the economic, social, and political aspects of the development of EU cultural policy.

This chapter discusses the events leading up to Britain's decision in 1967 to reapply for membership of the European Community and bilateral contacts with Germany after the application was rejected. Harold Wilson proved to be the key figure in establishing British policy towards membership of the EEC, as he coaxed a divided Labour government into supporting a second application. The chapter argues that although this strategy did not succeed, it did serve to demonstrate a more convincing commitment to Europe and placed Britain in a position from which membership of the EEC could be negotiated once de Gaulle had left the scene. Again, Britain's approach to Europe and the strategy of a close relationship with Germany were key foreign policy issues of the period.

This chapter examines why and how economic divergences resulted only in the partial disappearance of monetary cooperation from the European Community's agenda between June 1975 and June 1976. It firsts considers the development of a more positive European Economic Community (EEC) climate after the settlement of the British renegotiation issue, and how the change in Britain's position gave a renewed psychological impetus to European (monetary) cooperation, albeit temporarily. It then explores the extent to which domestic politics can influence the course of European (monetary) cooperation and goes on to discuss the EEC-wide consequences of economic divergences, along with their impact on the EEC's structure, in terms of both agenda (abandoning the Economic and Monetary Union?) and institutions (what role for the European Council?). The chapter also describes what was clearly the lowest point in terms of European monetary cooperation and how these times of crisis paved the way for a clearer sense of what still needed to be done in order to improve cooperation.

This chapter examines the paradoxical double turnaround in mid-1976: the improvement of economic convergence among European Economic Community (EEC) member states but the relative standstill in European monetary cooperation. Focusing on the period starting with France's decision to follow a strong anti-inflationary program until just before the Commission's decision to prioritize monetary union in mid-1977, the chapter considers the “Duisenberg proposals” and the emergence of an essentially Franco-German consensus about the need to prioritize the fight against inflation. It also assesses reactions to the Duisenberg proposals over the winter 1976–1977 and how the heads of government addressed the sudden worsening of economic prospects. Finally, it explores the planned revival of discussions about the Economic and Monetary Union among heads of government and the final rejection of most of the propositions contained in the Duisenberg initiative.

This chapter examines the relationship between competition policy and industrial policy. It shows that the principal determinants that influenced the relationship between competition policy and industrial policy in the European Economic Community (EEC) include the Treaty of Rome and its system of ‘undistorted competition’, which installed a competition regime with a strong, ‘constitutional’ character. The interaction of competition policy and industrial policy was also shaped by the personal characteristics and relationships of individual Commissioners, and by the broader economic context — a factor that became particularly important when it was realized that the plight of certain industries was not only acute but structural as well.

This chapter traces the evolution of the European Union (EU) law and policy on racism with the objective of identifying the factors that led the Member States to extend the Union's role in this field. It examines how anti-racism policy progressed given the market integration model of European social policy. It explores the influence of various political events in the development of anti-racism policy. These include the establishment of the European Economic Community in 1957, the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1991, and the issuance of the Racial Equality Directive.

The expertise provided by officials working in European institutions, between 1954 and 1958 at the West European Union and NATO in Paris and post-1958 in Brussels and Strasbourg, was directly linked to church mobilisation. The second chapter discusses the Paris ecumenical network established by Noël Salter and the origins of a Brussels ecumenical group around Baron C. D. A. van Lynden at the end of the 1950s. In parallel with the dialogue between churches and individuals working in European institutions, the Cold War led to the establishment of the Conference of European Churches which brought together churches from both Eastern and Western Europe. This chapter discusses the significance of the term ‘European’ for the CEC. The difference between the ‘official’ path of churches engaged in the CEC and the ‘informal’ dialogue around local ecumenism emerged in 1963 at the time of Britain’s application for membership of the European Economic Community.

This chapter continues the narrative of legal development of cartel control in Europe, discussing the period between the end of the Second World War and the start of the 1970s, at which point there was an upward shift in gear in relation to the European Community system of enforcement. This may be seen as an intermediate period, coinciding with the establishment of the European Communities and competition regulation becoming a key element in the new ‘Common Market’ systems, with cartel control tied into the need to ensure the effective guarantee of the larger European market (later to be referred to as the Single Market). The discussion details a major shift in attitude and tolerance in the years following World War II and the development of more stringent competition regulation in some European national legal systems, but most significantly in the context of first the European Coal and Steel Community, and then from the start of the 1960s, in the European Economic Community. Finally, the hardening attitude of the European Commission, at the forefront of this European system of control, is summarised as a prelude to discussion in the following chapters.

This chapter examines the influence of the US in the development of European competition law in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that European actors did in fact draw upon US antitrust ideas and that the history of European competition law was informed by a continuous transatlantic dialogue. Directorate-General for Competition (DG IV) officials and competition-policy experts formed part of a wider transatlantic landscape of intellectual exchange. In contrast, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its judgments often disregarded or (implicitly) opposed American ideas. Such resistance or indifference may lie in the fact that the ECJ was motivated by a quest for an autonomous, non-derivative understanding of competition law as part of an effort to express its constitutional mission of laying the building blocks for a collective European identity.

This chapter shows why the seemingly contradictory stories of the evolution of EU competition policy are not so contradictory after all; they are different pieces of a puzzle which must be put together to be complete. The competition policy of the European Economic Community (EEC) from 1963–81 cannot merely be considered as the successful implementation of Ordoliberal concepts, but rather as the result of various institutional actors within and outside the Commission. In particular, it shows that an account of the early evolution of EEC competition policy has to distinguish between the discussions taking place within the Directorate-General for Competition (DG IV) and in the political arena on the one hand, and the development of the law by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the other. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1.2 reviews the actions of the Commission during the 1960s, the 1970s, and the early 1980s, and discusses some central cases illustrating this process of clarification of the values guiding competition policy. Section 1.3 looks at relevant judgments by the ECJ during the same period while Section 1.4 concludes.

Reconstruction in Western Europe, completed by the early 1950s, led to unbounded optimism about future economic growth and to a strong desire for closer integration. Following the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949 among ten West European countries, six went further in 1951 by founding the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). After attempts to set up a European Defence Community and a European Political Community failed in 1954, negotiations between the ‘Six’ (belonging to the overall successful ECSC) in 1957 led to the creation of the European Economic Community. However, West European integration projects and Central and Eastern European adaptation to Soviet communism were overshadowed (and intensified) by pronounced East–West tensions, as expressed in the 1950–3 Korean War, the formal division of Germany into two states with a divided Berlin deep in East German territory and the Soviet Union's rise to nuclear power status together with the United States. Ideology took over from (dormant) nationalism as the prominent geopolitical force, even though tensions were reduced in the mid-1950s following Joseph Stalin's death.

This chapter explains how new concepts and strategies had to be devised to face the new North–South divide that seemed to be replacing the classic Cold War conflict. By the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union were conservative status quo powers that had more in common with each other than with the Global South. The Cold War was embedded in the international system and worked at much lower levels of tension than in earlier years. Would an East–West cooperation to deal with the Global South be viable? The Soviet Bloc did not appear to be keen on discussing a joint path out of the global economic turmoil, which it interpreted as the long-awaited crisis of capitalism. It was the European Economic Community (EEC), instead, that stood up as a distinctive actor, claiming to be distant from its members' imperial past and to offer a third way for the Third World, with goals that were not those of the Cold War superpowers.

This chapter examines how the Western European governments and the European Economic Community (EEC) itself tried to move on after the failure of the Werner Plan, starting with the 1974–1975 initiative of the French government. More specifically, it considers the extent to which the partial buildup of consensus about the need for action at the European level and about the need to adopt stability-oriented economic policies led to the adoption of several proposals. The chapter first discusses the context in which these various proposals appeared before analyzing the parallel attempts of the EEC and the French government to set out an improved version of the EEC exchange rate system (known as the snake, created in 1972). It then assesses France's second attempt to achieve such reforms following the reentry of the French franc in the snake. It also explains how these proposals, especially the Fourcade memorandum, introduced at an EEC level a whole set of issues that would remain on its agenda for years to come.