LAWFUEL – Law News Network – (Published by Europa Law Publishing, July 2006, written by Gordon Blanke MCIArb with foreword by Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Böckstiegel)
This new book seeks to analyse and discuss the European Commission’s recent use of arbitration clauses as a mechanism for the judicial monitoring of especially behavioural remedies in the context of EC merger control. As the discussions will show, despite the partially “pathological” nature of some of those clauses, international arbitration appears to be an ideal tool to provide for the merging parties’ medium- to long-term compliance with the remedies they have undertaken in order to obtain clearance of their proposed merger from the Commission. The Commission has taken this opportunity to try to tailor international arbitral mechanisms to its own specific substantive and procedural needs in controlling the correct implementation by the merging parties of the remedies in question.
Against this background, it is arguable that the Commission’s practice to date has given rise to the development of a unique supranational-type arbitration. With this in mind, the book makes the case for the nascence of “supranational arbitration” with a view to adjudicating the performance of behavioural remedies in the field of European merger control and, hence, demonstrates the emergence of the supranational arbitrator. The book also comprises a practical analytical annex on all relevant Commission decisions in the field to date.
