Regulatory norms in EU Competition Law assessment

This article explores the roles that regulatory norms play within EU competition law assessment. The question matters both for the consistency of the supervisory framework for economic activity in the EU and to better understand the legitimate concerns of competition law. Comparing the orthodox understanding of the inter-relationship between competition law and other regulatory norms with the contextual approach of contemporary antitrust assessment, the article examines potential tensions between these approaches through two case studies: regulatory non-compliance and regulatory gaming. In doing so, it considers how the more diverse public interest values within other market regulation may find indirect expression within competition enforcement and asks how we might justify the use of competition law to enforce regulatory norms more directly.