Introduction: Studying the EU's Government of Industries
Abstract
This chapter argues that there are two major grey areas in knowledge about competition policy at the scale of the European Union (EU): its doctrinal foundations and its actual application within specific industries. It argues that EU competition policy has indeed become an ever-present aspect of the government of industries in Europe. Since the 1950s, the EU's competition policy has progressively been intensified, densified and stabilized. During this process of institutionalization and reinstitutionalization, a number of enduring and recurrent features have developed in three stages: the first stage revisits the establishment, consolidation then intense reactivation of EU competition policy that occurred between the 1950s and the 1980s; the second stage narrows the focus to the activation of EU competition policy as a key instrument of EU-scale economic government in the 1980s and 1990s; the third stage highlights reforms that took place in 2003-2004 which reinstitutionalized the ideological, normative and process-defining foundations of this trans-industry regulation.
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Is part of halshs-01010842 Book Bernard Jullien, Andy Smith. The EU's Government of Industries: Markets, institutions and politics. Routledge, pp.266, 2014, Routledge studies on government and the European Union, 978-1-138-78676-9. ⟨10.4324/9781315766591⟩. ⟨halshs-01010842⟩