Competition, Economic Freedoms and Collective Action: What the US can teach Europe

Abstract

The article analyses, under a comparative approach, the case law of Us Courts and of the CJEU on the relationships between economic freedoms, competition law and collective action. In the first section, it describes the most controversial conclusions reached by the CJEU during the last decades. In the second one, it explains the rationales of American case law, on the basis of their historical development. In the third section, it compares the principles held in US case law with the decisions delivered by the CJEU and explains how them could be adapted to the problems recently emerged within European law, in order to correct the theoretical inconsistencies of the decisions upheld by the CJEU.