A quantitative quest for philosophical fairness in EU’s competition procedure

Abstract

The question of procedural fairness in EU’s competition procedure has been discussed widely in the academic literature based on the traditional positivistic legal method; so far without a success in producing a consensus on where the practical limitations of the concept of procedural fairness ought to lie. This thesis sets out to approach the problem more fundamentally by propping beyond the concept of procedural fairness in the legal positivistic sense, and venture into the territory of moral and political philosophy for establishing a practical understanding of the more general concept of fairness in human relations. Once the concept of fairness has been properly revealed in practical terms, the thesis attempts to quantitatively translate this concept of fairness into the laws to facilitate the composition of a fair legal rule. To achieve this, a novel methodological model is constructed based on microeconomic tools. This model, the model of fair rules, is then used to assess two dilemmas of procedural fairness in the context of EU’s competition procedure that have been solved by the CJEU based on the traditional juridical method. The results of the assessment suggest that methodological improvements can be made in the design of competition procedures with regards to facilitating procedural fairness. Such improvements would also have implications for the legal interpretive methodologies used by the EU courts.