Competition policy in times of crisis
Résumé
In the past, times of severe economic crisis regularly led to the weakening of competition policy. In retrospect, this reaction appears to have deepened the crises it was meant to alleviate, at least in the United States at the beginning of the New Deal. This precedent suggests that a backlash against competition policy would be a wrong answer to the current challenges, even though exceptional economic conditions call for flexibility and adaptations. This set of three articles addresses competition policy in times of crisis. Andrea Amelio and Georges Siotis describe the European Commission's handling of competition cases in the current unusual circumstances. Antoine Winckler and François-Charles Laprévote focus on State aid, and Carlos Winograd tells the story of the long-lasting negative impact of the Argentinian crisis of 2000 on the nascent competition policy.