53 resultados para company voluntary arrangement
Resumo:
Executive Summary. Both the Commission’s proposal for a ‘Competitiveness and Convergence Instrument’ and the ‘contractual arrangement’ presented by President Van Rompuy share a common concept: associating EU money with national structural reforms under a binding arrangement. The targeted ‘structural reforms’ are the labour market reforms and product and services market reforms in eurozone ‘peripheral’ countries facing the most severe external imbalances. Their implementation would speed up and facilitate the ‘internal devaluation’ process of these countries. In the worst case scenario, failure to adopt the necessary reforms and to adjust wages and prices downwards may lead the most vulnerable countries to leave the eurozone under social and political pressure. Contracts seek to reduce this risk by increasing compliance with the country-specific recommendations for structural reforms issued by the EU institutions within the European Semester, and in particular with the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). As for the financial support, it follows two different, albeit overlapping rationales. First, the perspective of obtaining EU funding would incentivize the governments of vulnerable countries to adopt reforms that would bear a high political and social cost in the short term. That is, without some form of incentive, it is unlikely that the necessary reforms would be undertaken and this could have significant negative consequences for the EMU as a whole. The second rationale amounts to outright solidarity: EU support is needed to cushion the inevitable socio-economic costs implied not only by the structural reform, but also by the internal devaluation taking place. To make sense of contractual arrangements, some points should be considered in future discussions: 1. Contracts on a voluntary basis only: Contracts cannot be mandatory unlike initially suggested in the Van Rompuy report. This stems not only from the inherent definition of a ‘contract’ – where mutual consent is key – but also from the non-binding nature of the preventive arm of the MIP. Making the country-specific recommendations issued by the EU institutions systematically binding would imply transfers of sovereignty from the national to the EU level that go well beyond the present discussion. Instead, contracts would introduce the possibility of making the preventive arm binding for some countries where corrections are most needed and urgent for the EMU as a whole.
Resumo:
The issue: Excluding cartels, most investigations into suspected infringements of European Union competition law are resolved with ‘commitment decisions’. The European Commission drops the case in exchange for a commitment from the company under investigation to implement measures to stop the presumed anti-competitive behaviour. Commitment decisions are considered speedier than formal sanctions (prohibition decisions) in restoring normal competitive market conditions. They have a cost, however: commitments are voluntary and are unlikely to be subject to judicial review. This reduces the European Commission’s incentive to build a robust case. Because commitment decisions do not establish any legal precedent, they provide for little guidance on the interpretation of the law. Policy challenge: The European Commission relies increasingly on commitment decisions. More transparency on the substance of allegations, and the establishment of a higher number of legal precedents, are however necessary. This applies in particular to cases that tackle antitrust issues in new areas, such as markets for digital goods, in which companies might find it difficult to assess if a certain behaviour constitutes a violation of competition rules. To ensure greater transparency and mitigate some of the drawbacks of commitment decisions, while retaining their main benefits, the full detail of the objections addressed by the European Commission to defendants should be published.
