"The Logic of Delegation: Explaining the Evolution of EU Merger Control"

Doleys, Thomas J. (1999) "The Logic of Delegation: Explaining the Evolution of EU Merger Control". In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Council Regulation 4064/89, otherwise known as the Merger Regulation, affected a significant transfer of authority from domestic competition authorities to the European Commission. Most analyses exploring the origins of this legislation focus on the negotiating dynamics among member governments in the Council of Ministers. This paper argues that, alone, such explanations are inadequate. They too often view legislative outcomes as an event, rather than an endpoint of a process. Instead, an adequate understanding of the Regulation must focus on the broad history of merger control and, in particular, the role played by the Commission. Specific attention is paid to the impact of the Commission’s dual-track effort to give merger control a Community dimension. The final section of the paper examines the administrative framework embedded within the Regulation. The paper argues that the relationship between member governments and the Commission can be usefully analyzed employing concepts and analytics borrowed from principal-agent theories.

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