Assessing innovation theories of harm in EU merger control

Abstract

On 15 April 2019, the Florence Competition Programme (FCP) organised its third Advanced Competition Seminar in the context of the 2018/2019 edition of the FCP Annual Training. The seminar focused on the analysis of the main innovation-related theories of harm elaborated in the field of EU merger control, taking into account that the current debate on the matter revolves around the opportunity to change the legal framework in domains where innovation represents a crucial competitive dimension. In particular, speakers observed that the topic is increasingly attracting policy makers’ attention, since we are currently witnessing an important consolidation wave, especially in the digital industries, in the USA and, to some extent, in the EU, too. Furthermore, the discussion shed light on the fact that, besides stimulating growth and technological change, innovation is being perceived as an antidote to the accumulation of market power, which is becoming a key parameter of competition in policy discourse and, as a result, it spurred heated discussions on its future evolution. As a matter of fact, while the analytical apparatus for standard price effects has been developed extensively throughout the European Commission’s case practice, there exists a substantial lack of both theoretical models and scientific tools that can be used in the assessment of anticompetitive harm when innovation is at stake.