News & Events

On 14th June, Chillin’Competition organised its conference “State Aid: Charting the Territory” and spoke about the future of state aid control in a post-Brexit world.

Speakers at the conference included Viktor Kreuschitz (Judge at the General Court), Vincent Verouden (European Commission), Penelope Papandropoulos (European Commission), Massimo Merola (BonelliErede), José Luis Buendía Sierra (Garrigues), Jacques Derenne (SheppardMullin), Alfonso Lamadrid de Pablo (Garrigues), Andreas von Bonin (Freshfields), Juliette Enser (Competition and Markets Authority), Christian Jordal (EFTA Surveillance Authority), Pablo Ibáñez Colomo (LSE and College of Europe) and many others.

Link to the conference website

On May 20, the European Policy Centre (EPC) published the report “Ensuring a post-Brexit level playing field” on future EU-UK trading relations.

With contributions from Vincent Verouden (European Commision), Pablo Ibáñez Colomo (LSE), David Baldock (Senior Fellow, Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP)), Larissa Brunner (Policy Analyst), Emily Lydgate (Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex; Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory), Marley Morris (Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)), Martin Nesbit (Senior Fellow and Head of Climate and Environmental Governance, Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP)), Jacques Pelkmans (Senior Fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)), and Fabian Zuleeg (Chief Executive and Chief Economist)

Link to report

E.CA Economics has participated in a panel of the 2^nd Annual Conference of the European Competition Lawyers Association, on 24 and 25 May in Prague. The panel discussed the updating of the EC Block Exemption Regulation for vertical restraints.

Link to Brochure

In a recent Juve article an E.CA team headed by Dr. Hans W. Friederiszick is mentioned and considered decisive for the withdrawal of a damages claims brought by Schlecker, Müller and Rossmann against chocolate and biscuit manufacturers.

Link to article

Dr. Hans W. Friederiszick, Director at E.CA Economics, presented at the Speyerer Kartellrechtsforum in Speyer University on 25 March 2019 on the Change in Theories of Harm and the Effects of Digitization on Economic Analyses in Competition Law.

Link to presentation

E.CA Economics will attend the first MaCCI Career Day in Competition Economics. The event will take place on 28 March 2019 at the Mannheim University.

For further details and requirements, please check our career page.

E.CA Economics attended the Bocconi & Jobs abroad. The event took place in Brussels at the Pullmann Brussels Midi Hotel on 11 March 2019.

We are proud to announce that our Director, Simone Kohnz; our Associate Principal, Ela Glowicka and our Senior Consultant, Astrid Jung were acknowledged as ’40 in their 40s Notable Women at Competition Professionals in Economics’ Award organised by W@Competition.

Link to W@ 40 in their 40’s list

Alia Schweiger and Linda Gratz will be participating in the 3rd Annual W@Competition Conference that will be held on 21st February 2019 at The Hotel, Brussels.

The one-day conference will feature a number of renowned and yet to be discovered competition professionals from enforcement authorities, in-house, private practice and competition economics.

Link to the event

The paper “Recent economic applications in EU merger control: UPP and beyond” by Hans W. Friederiszick, Rainer Nitsche, Theon van Dijk and Vincent Verouden has been nominated for the 2019 Antitrust Writing Awards!

Link to nominee page

We are proud to announce the following promotions – Bas Dessens, Principal; Rafael Aigner, Manager; Christoph von Muellern, Manager; Sefan Witte, Manager; Brecht Boone, Senior Economist; Harm van Leeuwen, Senior Economist. Congratulations – great success!

Rainer Nitsche presented at the Training for National judges on Antitrust enforcement in digital markets in Düsseldorf on 13-14 December 2018. His presentation covered the characteristics of digital and multi-sided markets as well as market definition.
The 1.5-day seminar aims at equipping judges who deal with competition law cases with the tools to understand online platforms and analyse digital, two- and multisided markets and train them to take the relevant competition law and economic considerations into account in the execution of their tasks. The seminar focuses on building specialised knowledge on digital markets and online platforms with regard to the application of Article 102 TFEU and merger control.

Hans W. Friederiszick participated in the European Forum on Competition Litigation that was held in Surrey (UK) on 28-30 November 2018.

Each year, the Forum’s Steering Committee welcomes up to 48 leading legal practitioners from across Europe, each of whom is personally selected and specialises in competition litigation matters. The group include representatives for both defendants and claimants, supplemented by a select group of economists and funders. The purpose of the Forum is to share the most pressing issues faced on behalf of clients, to learn how others address these problems and identify solutions that can work for each company.

Link to Website

Rainer Nitsche spoke at the Mannheim Competition Policy Forum on 24 October 2018. He talked about intra-platform competition on hybrid e-commerce platforms like Amazon. The Forum aims at providing a platform for the discussion of recent cases, general competition policy issues, and relevant academic research in the field. Renowned practitioners and academics are invited to present their views on cases and general policy questions. The presentation is followed by a discussion of the economic implications with the audience.

On 11 September 2018 Hans W. Friederiszick presented at the  Global Competition Law Centre’s 102^nd Lunch Talk in Brussels. Moderated by Eric MORGAN DE RIVERY, JonesDay, Nicholas BANASEVIC, DG COMP, Tero LOUKO, Google, and Hans, E.CA Economics, the panel discussed the recent Google Android decision.

Link to Hans’ view on the case

E.CA Economics is again sponsor of the EARIE Annual Conference. This year it will take place in Athens (Greece) from 31 August to 2 September 2018 and it is hosted by the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) and the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE). The Scientific Committee Chair is Paul Heidhues (ESMT Berlin and DICE, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf).

Link to the conference site

For further details and requirements, please check our careers page.

Hans W. Friederiszick, Rafael Aigner and Stefan Witte participated in the 2018 CRESSE Conference titled “Advances in the Analysis of Competition Policy and Regulation”. It took place  from 29^th June to 1^st July in Crete. Hans contributed to a panel on ‘Foreclosure in platform markets‘ which was chaired by Howard Shelanski, a  former Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics.

Link to Conference Program

On June 26^th, DG Competition’s Chief Economist Team celebrated its 15^th anniversary. Four current or past E.CA economists took part in this event: Lars-Hendrik Röller, the first Chief Economist and one of E.CA Economics founders, Hans W. Friederiszick, Ela Glowicka and Vincent Verouden. Commissioner Vestager and Director General Laitenberger congratulated the CET.

Hans W. Friederiszick spoke at the CCP 14^th Annual Conference on Competition Policy and Industrial Policy: Is there a need for a new balance?, on 7-8 June at the Enterprise Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich. His presentation “The German way forward in regulating digital platforms”  focussed on the evolution and effects of digital platform markets and the German vision to regulating the market.

Go to presentation

Go to external event page

E.CA Economics has been awarded a framework contract for the provision of support studies for evaluations and impact assessments in the area of State aid policy by the European Commission, DG Competition

The subject of this contract is to conduct evaluation and impact assessment studies regarding one or more State aid policy instruments (legislation, guidelines, notice etc.) from an inter-disciplinary perspective and in accordance with the Commission’s binding evaluation and impact assessment standards.  The contract was awarded to a consortium of five partners: DIW Berlin, E.CA Economics, Lear, Sheppard Mullin and Uea Consulting. E.CA Economics is the consortium leader.

E.CA Economics co-organised this year’s GCR LIVE IP, Antitrust & Innovation conference, which was held in Hotel Amigo Brussels on 13 March 2018. A short report of the event can be found here.

E.CA Economics has promoted German national Simone Kohnz to director in Berlin.

Simone joined E.CA Economics in 2007 after having worked for a UK-based economic consulting firm. She has extensive experience in economic consulting advising clients from a wide range of industries, in all fields of competition policy and across a number of jurisdictions including Germany, the European Union, the UK, and Austria and specialises in the quantification of damages in private litigation cases.

Download press release here.

Download the GCR article here.

Rainer Nitsche presented at the Gesprächskreis für Beihilfenrecht on 11 December in Berlin.  He spoke about rescue and restructuring aid.

His presentation can be found here.

Dr Theon van Dijk presented at the CMS EU Competition 2017 on 19 October 2017. The conference brought together leading competition law practitioners, economists, in-house counsels, government officials, judges and academics. Johannes Laitenberger, Director General DG Competition, EU Commission, was the special guest speaker.

More details about the conference can be found here.

E.CA Competition sponsored this year’s EARIE conference, which was held in Maastricht from 31 August to 2 September. EARIE is the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics. At the EARIE annual conferences academic papers in the area of industrial organization and regulation are presented and discussed. Further details of the conference can be found at www.earie2017.org.

With more than 40 senior law and economic experts, the Antitrust Enforcement Symposium in Oxford has become one of the leading platforms for most recent competition policy issues around the globe. The symposium was organised by Ariel Ezrachi and Bill E. Kovacic and supported by E.CA. This year it featured keynote speeches by Maureen Ohlhausen, FTC, Paul Johnson, Canadian Competition Bureau and Bob Marshall Bates White. Hans W. Friederiszick, E.CA, contributed to the panel discussion on digital markets.

See the programme of the Symposium here.

DG Comp organised a workshop in Brussels with economic experts on the quantification of passing-on of overcharges in damages actions. Academic presentations were given by Roman Inderst, Özlem Bedre-Defolie, Markus Reisinger, André Romahn, Frank Verboven and Frode Steen, among others.

Hans W. Friederiszick, E.CA, discussed the practical feasibility specifically highlighting the discrepancy between economic and legal causality according to the recent Sainsbury’s vs. MasterCard decision (CAT, 2016).

Please find the presentation here.