Verpflichtungszusagen im EU-Wettbewerbsrecht

In the course of the ‘modernisation’ of procedural EU competition law in 2004, a new instrument was made available to the European Commission. Pursuant to Art. 9 Regulation 1/2003, the Commission can make binding commitments offered by companies to allay concerns about competition without finding an infringement. Commitment decisions play an important role in practice. The introduction of the commitment procedure raised hopes of a new, more efficient and more effective style of competition law enforcement. However, it also raised concerns with regard to the rule of law for competition procedures in the Commission. Based on the Commission’s decisional practices, this book analyses to what extent the commitment procedure is used to pursue objectives that go beyond the Commission’s mandate of enforcing EU competition law.