Conferences at MPI for Private Law, Hamburg

Private Law in Eastern Europe – Autonomous Developments or Legal Transplants?

The MPI website informs: On 27 and 28 March 2009 a conference will be held at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law on the topic “Private Law in Eastern Europe – Autonomous Developments or Legal Transplants?”.

Structure and Effects in EU Competition Law – Studies on Exclusionary Conduct and State Aid

The MPI website informs: The Commission of the European Community has since the end of the 1990’s pursued a reform agenda which has led to broad changes in European competition law policy. A central axis of this reform has been an increasing economisation of competition law. Also known as “the more economic approach”, this paradigm shift has found expression, for example, in the newly drafted Merger Regulation (139/2004) and in the regulations for evaluating horizontal mergers. In the course of 2008 this reorientation of the European Commission was further solidified in respect of EC state aid law and the regulation of exclusionary practices by dominant firms (Art. 82 EC).

It is against this background that Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Basedow has, with the assistance of Dr. Wolfgang Wurmnest, organised an international and interdisciplinary conference to be held on 23 and 24 January 2009 at the Hamburg MPI: „Structure and Effects in EU Competition Law – Studies on Exclusionary Conduct and State Aid“.

Alongside foundational presentations on the aims of European competition and state aid law, the speakers will examine the legal and economic implications of this reorientation as concerns selected exclusionary practices of dominant firms and selected problems of state aid control.

The conference draws from both academia and practice. Speakers will include scholars from both in- and outside Germany, officials of the European Commission, representatives of national competition agencies and a judge of the Court of First Instance.