Commitments or prohibition? The EU antitrust dilemma

Commitments have a cost: commitments are voluntary and are unlikely to be subject to judicial review. This reduces the European Commission’s ince

Publishing date: 31 January 2014
Authors: Mario Mariniello

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The issue: Excluding cartels, most investigations into suspected infringements of European Union competition law are resolved with ‘commitment decisions’. The European Commission drops the case in exchange for a commitment from the company under investigation to implement measures to stop the presumed anti-competitive behaviour. Commitment decisions are considered speedier than formal sanctions (prohibition decisions) in restoring normal competitive market conditions. They have a cost, however: commitments are voluntary and are unlikely to be subject to judicial review. This reduces the European Commission’s incentive to build a robust case. Because commitment decisions do not establish any legal precedent, they provide for little guidance on the interpretation of the law.

Policy challenge: The European Commission relies increasingly on commitment decisions. More transparency on the substance of allegations, and the establishment of a higher number of legal precedents, are however necessary. This applies in particular to cases that tackle antitrust issues in new areas, such as markets for digital goods, in which companies might find it difficult to assess if a certain behaviour constitutes a violation of competition rules. To ensure greater transparency and mitigate some of the drawbacks of commitment decisions, while retaining their main benefits, the full detail of the objections addressed by the European Commission to defendants should be published.

About the authors

Mario Mariniello

Mario Mariniello is a Non-resident fellow at Bruegel since September 2024. He is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Poland, and formerly taught at the University of Namur, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the University of Florence. He is the author of "Digital Economic Policy", Oxford University Press 2022.

His main interests are the economics of digital markets, competition policy and the impact of technology in labour markets.

Mario was previously a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, where he launched and led the “Future of Work and Inclusive Growth” project. He also previously led Bruegel's digital and competition policy research agenda.

He was Digital Adviser at the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), a European Commission in-house think-tank that operated under the authority of the former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a member of the Chief Economist Team at DG Competition (the Commission’s antitrust department), and worked on the use of AI in workplaces at the Commission’s DG Employment.

Mario holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Organization from the European University Institute (Florence) and a M.Sc. in Economics from CORIPE (Turin). He is currently pursuing a bachelor degree in Philosophy at KU Leuven.