By Simon Zekaria - 26th February 2004
A senior Brussels legal official has rejected claims by a top former judge of the EU courts that Europe may need a dedicated mergers court to take on competition disputes.
Sir David Edward, in an interview with this website this week, suggested the EU "create, below the Court of First Instance [the lower chamber], a specialist competition appeal tribunal."
But Michel Petite, director general of the European Commission’s legal service said there was “no need” for a separate competition tribunal in Luxembourg.
“The CFI has been very expert in competition law so far,” said Petite.
“It is efficient enough without creating a specialised chamber.”
European regulators suffered a series of heavy defeats at the CFI in 2002, as the court struck down merger verdicts given by the commission.
The EU executive on Thursday issued figures on Thursday showing that, for the period 2002-2003, the commission triumphed in 79 per cent of cases brought before the ECJ, whilst reaching only a 55 per cent success-rate at its sister court, the CFI.
And Petite explained this “phenomenon” by saying that whilst the majority of cases brought before the ECJ are filed by the EU as claimants, Brussels is more often than not the target of legal action in cases seen by the CFI – resulting in restricted legal ‘flexibility’ over case preparation.
Second, the official said that whilst cases brought to the ECJ are on matters of pure EU law – the specialisation of the commission’s legal teams – questions raised by the CFI centre on facts and economic analysis.
And it was a lack of rigorous evidence and analysis that precipitated the commission’s downfall in the three landmark 2002 cases - Airtours, Schneider-Legrand and Sida-Laval.
The comments come as European competition officials are in the midst of overhauling the technical and staffing resources of their merger units by March this year, in a bid to tighten-up their case analysis and stave off further losses.
To read the full transcript of the EUpolitix.com interview with Sir David Edward, click on the 'further reading' link to the right.
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