"Leveling the Playing Field in the EU, NAFTA, CAN, Mercosur and Beyond: Comparing the Role of Competition Rules in Regional Economic Organizations"

Jones, Clifford A. and Levin, Frederic G. (2005) "Leveling the Playing Field in the EU, NAFTA, CAN, Mercosur and Beyond: Comparing the Role of Competition Rules in Regional Economic Organizations". In: UNSPECIFIED, Austin, Texas. (Unpublished)

	Plain Text Download (68Kb)
	Microsoft Word Download (112Kb)

Abstract

[From the Introduction]. While more recent documents have placed more emphasis on maintenance of competitive markets as the first objective of EC competition policy and seemingly demoted the single market objective to second place, there is no doubt that both are important. Because the Community welcomed ten new members in 2004 and expects two to three more in 2007, the single market objective may well take on renewed importance. Many of the new Member States and candidates for EU membership are former Communist states to whom "free market" has been a pejorative term for most of the decades since the close of World War II. The new Member States frequently are also new market economies in which those former state-owned industries which have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union are often dominant in the national markets. The challenges of creation of a single market free of distortions and restrictions of competition in the context of ten new members are arguably comparable to if not greater than those which faced the Six in 1952 and 1958.

Actions (login required)