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 COMPETITION OBSERVATORY


Considering the importance of defining and implementing an adequate Competition Policy CEDU has institutionalized a Competition Observatory.

The importance of a Competition policy in the context of market’s economy, has been universally recognized. In a general manner, there is a worldwide movement which promotes not only the establishment of a system to defend competition (antitrust), as well as granting the effectiveness of such systems, including the institutionalization and the development of independent market’s regulation. Competition Policy is, within the European space, historically and intrinsically connected to the integration process and is one of the structural pillars of the Internal Market. Since May 2004 the European Commission has stimulated, after the 1999 White Book, a process to reform or "modernize" European Competition Law which, for many commentators, has been "a real Copernicus revolution" and which has answered to the needs deriving from a new Union’s configuration (East enlargement) and the new market regulation challenges, within the context of economic relations (and political) becoming more transnational every day.

Meanwhile many questions arose with the emergence of the 2008 financial crisis, with its epicentre in the United States of America and globally and immediately transposed and felt worldwide (with special intensity in some of the Union’s areas, in particular in the "euro zone"). The absolute and unquestionable Competition benefits paradigm - which presupposes an economic model of unlimited and continuous expansion/ growth -  started to be revisited. A concern starts to get visible in several sectors of the doctrine and in international forums: "is competition always good?" - here is one of today's questions that can only be answered with a profound knowledge and analysis of the economic and political reality and issues, maybe regionally recognizable in an economic transnational relations context.

Regarding this reality and the importance of defining and implementing an adequate Competition Policy CEDU within its research guideline on Law and Internal Market Regulation and Competition has institutionalized a COMPETITION OBSERVATORY. This Observatory is centered in the collection of information and analysis of Politics and Competition Law, within the space and the political European Integration context, but its more opened to the Union's exterior reality naturally interacting and forming a broader context - according to the economy's global governance. The aim is to accomplish a Lusophone competition and markets' regulation perspective.

The Observatory's objective is to study and critically analyze the Competition Policy defined and implemented within the European Integration and Losophone perspective. The Observatory is going to regularly publish a scientific activities' report, advertising its yearly defined acting guidelines and promoting studies, gathering information, organizing professional training sessions and disclosing papers and reports.


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