The objective of Article 101 of the Treaty of Lisbon
The purpose of Article 101 of the Lisbon Treaty has a commercial use. This economic objective represented by Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty makes it possible to protect, guarantee and secure the market efficiently. Article 101 of the Treaty protects the market because the market offers a variety of products at the lowest price. It is in the interest of the people that competition, as a mechanism against the market, creates a more efficient relationship. For a cartel agreement to be considered incompatible under Article 101, it must meet all its conditions.
First, one must see or prove an action that favors two different enterprises. It is then verified whether the two companies have an agreement between them or have agreed to organize operations with each other. This kind of action significantly affects the market by disrupting fair competition. According to authors Craig / de Burce in one example, they say that “one supplier intends to enter the market but decides to establish a deal with the Brown company using his distributor in a particular area. It announces from the other side as a condition that I only distribute this product to this firm and no one else in that area. “
Here it is seen that this agreement has affected some market restriction, but it also has an indication of improvement and expansion market, as a new product is entering the market. Such contracts limit competition, but on the other hand, improving in part means that judging these issues is not objective. A deal that exists in the sense of the Cartel is therefore in favor of two companies. One of the ECJ’s decisions concerning a pharmaceutical firm, Bayer, with its business partners, suspected that these firms could be in a cartel agreement under Article 101, but, the Commission could not prove whether these companies had agreed to the contract or merely committed coordinated actions or behaviors to reduce competition. Bayer could therefore not be tried to decide if they had violated Article 101 article 1 of the treaty even though this firm had reduced competition.
According to the Union, an agreement made by two parties can also be accepted if it is proven by tacit assertion. In one of the Commission’s decisions, it was defined that a form of coordination between two companies, which did not come in the form of a contract but merely practical cooperation to reduce competition, without having to do so in writing.
The EU cartel rules are binding on horizontal and vertical agreements. By parallel contracts, we mean those agreements that are made between two parties that have the scope of operation in the same market. Whereas, vertical transactions are concluded between two competitors operating at different rates of production and distribution. The Commission has published Directives on vertical agreements, while on horizontal ones the Commission has published Directives on the implementation of Article 101 of the Treaty of Lisbon.
The objective of Article 101