As scholars and activists seek to define and promote greater corporate political responsibility (CPR), they will benefit from understanding practitioner perspectives and how executives are responding to rising scrutiny of their political influences, reputational risk and pressure from employees, customers and investors to get involved in civic, political, and societal issues. This chapter draws on firsthand conversations with practitioners, including executives in government affairs; sustainability; senior leadership; and diversity, equity and inclusion, during the launch of a university-based CPR initiative. I summarize practitioner motivations, interests, barriers and challenges related to engaging in conversations about CPR, as well as committing or acting to improve CPR. Following the summary, I present implications for further research and several possible paths forward, including leveraging practitioners’ value on accountability, sustaining external calls for transparency, strengthening awareness of systems, and reframing CPR as part of a larger dialogue around society’s “social contract.”

This chapter examines the implicit-procedural balancing tools, embedded in the exercise of the competition enforcers’ discretion and priority setting powers. Modernisation has entrusted the Commission and NCAs with a new balancing tool in the form of their discretional enforcement powers. Moreover, it has incentivised the Commission and NCAs to direct their enforcement efforts towards clear-cut infringements of Article 101 TFEU, which are unlikely to be justified by overriding non-competition interests. The competition enforcers have used their detection, target, instrument, and outcome discretion to decide not to enforce Article 101 TFEU against other types of agreements even when they do not meet the conditions for an exception under Article 101(1) and (3) TFEU. As a result, investigations into agreements that raised balancing questions were often settled with negotiated remedies or terminated by closing the probe into the case altogether. The chapter investigated various aspects of priority setting, including the selection of a strategy for identifying anti-competitive behaviour; the choice of whether to open an investigation and pursue a case; choice of enforcement instrument (sector regulation, markets-work, informal opinions, and the effect on trade test); and selection of remedies (fines, commitments, and findings of inapplicability).

This chapter examines the implicit-procedural balancing tools, embedded in the exercise of the competition enforcers’ discretion and priority setting powers. Modernisation has entrusted the Commission and NCAs with a new balancing tool in the form of their discretional enforcement powers. Moreover, it has incentivised the Commission and NCAs to direct their enforcement efforts towards clear-cut infringements of Article 101 TFEU, which are unlikely to be justified by overriding non-competition interests. The competition enforcers have used their detection, target, instrument, and outcome discretion to decide not to enforce Article 101 TFEU against other types of agreements even when they do not meet the conditions for an exception under Article 101(1) and (3) TFEU. As a result, investigations into agreements that raised balancing questions were often settled with negotiated remedies or terminated by closing the probe into the case altogether. The chapter investigated various aspects of priority setting, including the selection of a strategy for identifying anti-competitive behaviour; the choice of whether to open an investigation and pursue a case; choice of enforcement instrument (sector regulation, markets-work, informal opinions, and the effect on trade test); and selection of remedies (fines, commitments, and findings of inapplicability).

The chapter looks into the effectiveness of commitment decisions by reviewing selected examples from the European Commission’s jurisdiction. Proceedings with a considerable or often a very high degree of similarity in the air traffic, energy and payment-card industries provide useful insights into the extent to which the preceding decisions influence the behaviour of market participants and the approach taken by the Commission. The author concludes that commitment decisions are likely to be followed by other commitment decisions in similar cases and there is little evidence to suggest that market players voluntarily adjust their behaviour following a commitment case. A few recent examples suggest that this approach might not hold universally, leaving the actual impact of the commitment decisions challenging to forecast. It is argued that the limited deterrence and negative effect on legal certainty in the end limits the advantages of commitment decisions, as procedural efficiencies might evaporate if similar proceedings occur time after time. This, ultimately, may call into question the effectiveness of this tool, as practical examples suggest that the theoretical advantages are often not realised, while the negative effects on legal certainty and the limited deterrence effect are prominent.

In the US, consent judgments, decrees, or orders entered into between merging parties and government are a longstanding tradition. There are three key components to such consensus-based remedies. First, the remedies are not truly a consensus. The second notion is one of transparency: the remedies proposed in such settlements are made public. The nature of the theories of harm the remedies seek to mitigate are public as well. The third notion is typically a question of the overall merits of the remedy. Whether or not a merger remedy is in the public interest is a broad question. This chapter details the common provisions of the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission’s settlements, alongside the EU Commission’s settlements. It looks for common weaknesses between the methods of settlement deployed, and the harms to competition that might arise from such systems. It concludes that competition policy is increasingly regulatory and non-adjudicatory. To the extent that consent settlements are important and prominent, it would make sense to have stakeholders have some significant say in the settlement. Lack of meaningful judicial review assures that any concerns are ignored. The authors critically note that lack of transparency assures that any concerns not listed in the proposed settlement are not properly addressed.

This chapter discusses the institutional set-up and procedural design of a possible future European market investigation regime. The institutional framework and procedural rules must be tailored to promote the core goals of the new instrument, namely to address competition problems that do not primarily follow from conduct, but from „features of the market“, such that a European market investigation – contrary to traditional infringement proceedings – will not be of a quasi-criminal nature, but a purely administrative proceedings, and to allow for a particular timely intervention. Against this background, the following questions are raised: How does the market investigation regime interact with Article 101 and 102 TFEU enforcement and sector inquiries at the EU level and at the national level? How can the procedure be structured such as to allow for a timely and effective intervention? What can be done to allow for a less adversarial and more participative interaction between the Commission and market actors? Furthermore, the remedial regime, voluntary commitments, the possibility for interim measures and judicial review are discussed.

It was early in the morning of October 5, 2015 when the trade ministers of twelve countries announced in Atlanta, Georgia, the successful conclusion of a seven-year, extremely complex negotiating effort known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The TPP was formally signed four months after its conclusion, on February 4, 2016, in Auckland, New Zealand, apparently heralding a new momentum for international trade and investment liberalization.