"Regulatory competition within Europe and internationally, operates in several fields with different outcomes. This book offers a comparative legal and economic analysis of corporate, securities and competition law, exploring the reasons behind such differences. The books conceptual framework covers the most relevant drivers of competition, including legal actors incentives, channels of competition and governance design. It shows how the different drivers and institutional designs are shaping competitive interactions, drawing relevant conclusions for both general and field specific regulatory policy. Providing a comparative analysis of regulatory competition in three legal fields, this book will be a valuable resource for researchers and academics in law, economics and political science, as well as policymakers legislator, regulator, judiciary at both national and European levels."--Publisher

Professional services are a key component of the EU internal market economy yet also significantly challenge the legal framework governing this internal market. Indeed, specific professional regulatory structures, which are often the result of a blend of government and self-regulation, hold clear potential for conflict with EU free movement and competition law rules. Hence this book looks at the manner in which both free movement and competition laws might apply to such self- and co-regulatory set-ups, and at the leeway given to quality considerations (apparently) conflicting with free movement or competition objectives. In addition, since court action will seldom suffice to genuinely integrate a market, the book also explores those instruments of EU secondary legislation that are likely to impact the most on the provision of professional services. However, the book goes beyond a mere inventory to ask how EU Internal Market policy could contribute to the optimal legal environment for professional services. A law and economics analysis is employed to investigate the need for specific professional rules, the preferred type of regulator (self-, co- or government regulation), and the level - national and/or European - at which regulation should be adopted. As becomes clear, the story of the market for professional services is one of market and government failure; the author is thus left to compare imperfect situations where market failures compete with rent-seeking efforts, the tendency towards over-centralisation and national protectionism. This book offers both an in-depth legal analysis of the EU framework as it applies to professional services as well as a more normative evaluation of this framework based on insights from law and economics scholarship. It will therefore be a valuable resource for all practitioners, policy-makers and academics dealing with professional services, as well as, more generally, with questions of quality and self-regulation.

Increasingly, EU market regulation measures have been introduced in the pursuit of economic justice and welfare. This book illustrates how regulation can help to prevent the abuse of dominance, in particular the abuse of public capital by the state.

Recent years have seen a major growth in the European law concerning the operation of the energy industry, especially with respect to electricity and gas. Several directives have been adopted that are aimed at the promotion of competition in this key sector of the European economy. At thesame time, the jurisprudence of the European Court had developed further on matters such as access to networks, import and export monopolies and security of supply.In this book the authors examine the principal legislation, Treaty provisions and decisions of the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance of the EU as they related to the promotion of competition in European energy markets. In particular, two chapters are devoted to a detailed analysis of theprovisions of the two directives that set out common rules for the creation of an internal market in the electricity and gas sectors. In each case, the analysis is set in the context of the various programmes of energy market liberalization and privatization in the Member States, which aresummarized in this book. However, the authors also take the wider pan-European context into account, explaining the requirements and the implications of the European Economic Area Agreement, the Energy Charter Treaty and the Europe Agreements with countries of Central and Eastern Europe.The approach adopted by the authors is both analytical and historical. They locate the legislation in the context of the EU Internal Market programme that began in the late 1980s and explain the roles played by the various parties (energy industries, consumers and EU institutions) in shaping thefinal legislation. Importantly, they explain how the framework character of the energy directives has led to further important rule-making in the implementation of the directives across the EU. They conclude that a co-ordinated response between the European Commission and the national regulatorswill be essential to resolve problems arising in the transition to a competitive energy market in the EU.

The work challenges the commonly accepted idea that the European single market needs a harmonized company law as a precondition for its correct functioning, on the basis of a law and economics comparison with the American situation. The study critically analyzes the two major reasons advanced to justify harmonization - the race to the bottom argument and the standardization argument - on the basis of the regulatory competition paradigm and concludes that they are basically wrong. Instead of pursuing harmonization of substantive company law, the proposal is to adjust conflict of law rules in favor of the incorporation theory as ruled by the European Court of Justice in its important Centros-decision of March 1999. Companies should be granted freedom of establishment and free movement among jurisdictions in the European Union.

Efforts to tackle the trade impeding effects of divergent standards and regulations are at the core of European economic relations. This volume draws on literature from several disciplines to develop a comprehensive account of the regulatory strategies and institutional arrangements adopted by the EU in promoting the single market in goods. It provides a historical overview and detailed cases studies of the various policy initiatives that have altered the boundaries between the public and private sector in fostering market integration. Tackling interstate barriers to trade has relied heavily on European law to shape the framework of relations between states, and trade liberalization has been facilitated by legal rulings resolving territorial conflicts over regulatory jurisdiction and authority. The European Court of Justice has actively shaped markets, acting as a 'free trade umpire' in balancing the goals of market liberalization and market regulation while fostering market compliance. Although markets are absolutely dependent on public authority, the institutional innovation of the EU has been to use the private sector in an ancillary role to the state. By delegating responsibility to set standards for market access, the EU has chosen to draw on the resources of private actors, resulting in a system of governance that is a distinctive, hybrid model of regulation composed of state and non-state actors. Though the "outsourcing" of public sector regulatory activity was expected to be more effective than the process of regulatory harmonization, progress has been difficult. The current deficit in setting standards for European-wide market access raises concerns about the efficiency and effectiveness of such a regulatory regime. Egan provides a detailed evaluation of that process, highlighting regulatory gaps in the single market and the need to focus not only on the process of market integration, but also its outcome and impact on European business. Comparisons with American efforts to create a national market are made throughout to demonstrate the difficulties of constructing and maintaining a single market. American and European efforts to devise a uniform market for commerce and trade have involved both public and private authorities, though with different degrees of coordination and centralization, as many of the strategies undertaken by the EU echo earlier American market-building efforts.