21. und 22. Mai X. Internationale ... - Bundeskartellamt

Conclusion
The Internet and E-Commerce are clearly having an enormous impact on many
aspects of business. Equally clearly, however, the competition rules and the
instruments available to us are capable of dealing with the issues raised.
Whether it be the fairly traditional assessment of horizontal and vertical
concentration, or the more novel requirements of examining leveraging through
technical bundling, the competition rules, being goal-oriented, are sufficiently
flexible tools.
The need for international co-operation
However, there is one area where the existing instruments need assistance. And
that is the area of international co-operation. It is now a truism to state that the
world economy has become increasingly global. Inevitably, globalisation is all the
more evident in the new economy. Increased co-operation with other anti-trust
authorities is therefore an obvious, indeed indispensable, response to the
challenges which the Commission faces as a result of this globalisation.
Antitrust enforcers came to realise that the transnational character of today’s
competition cases clashes with the traditionally territorial scope of domestic
antitrust rules. When we apply our antitrust rules today, we increasingly observe
that consumers whom we are mandated to protect are being adversely affected
by anticompetitive behaviour taking place outside our jurisdiction. Often, we have
to overcome a number of legal and practical obstacles to discover the necessary
evidence and to impose sanctions on global cartels which are detrimental to the
efficient conduct of business and harm costumers. The same applies to abuses
or attempts at monopolisation by dominant players on the world market.
As a means of addressing these issues we have for example concluded two
competition law enforcement cooperation agreements with the United States.
The 1991 (basic agreement) and 1998 (“positive comity”) agreements have been
a marked success. Our experience with bilateral EU/US cooperation has been
that it works very effectively – and particularly so in merger cases, substantially
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