The First Steps of the Aruban Fair Trade Authority as an Antitrust Enforcer

*A conversation with Director Kross and Dr. Wessel Geursen

Earlier this year, one of the editors of eulawenforcement.com had the chance to discuss the interesting topic of the gestation of a competition authority and the challenges it faces in its first years of existence. This issue was at the core of the event ‘Competition law enforcement overseas: an interactive discussion with the Aruba Fair Trade Authority (AFTA)’, organized by the RENFORCE Building Block ‘Public Interest Ecosystems’ (PIE) at Utrecht Law School. In what follows below, we describe some of the main takeaways of our insightful conversation with the Director of the Aruban Fair Trade Authority (AFTA) Ernesto Kross and Dr. Wessel Geursen, a competition lawyer and specialist on the territorial scope of application of EU law.

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Not so flexible? The instrumental usage of soft law in EU telecommunications regulation

What is ‘instrumental usage’ of soft law and why does it matter?

At the hand of a case study in the telecom sector, this blogpost maintains that soft laws can erode the principles of accountability and vertical division of powers when used instrumentally/strategically by enforcers. An example of such strategic use will be the instance when, due to its ineffectiveness, a soft law instrument is converted/leveraged into hard law. The working definition of instrumental use coined by this author is as follows: deploying soft law in order to obtain enforcement outcomes that are consistent with an enforcer’s own vision of the ‘correct’ modus operandi of EU (utility) regulation (and away from public interest/public good considerations).  

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