A competition tribunal ? The House of Lords Report

A while back, we noted that the British House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union had taken evidence on whether a judicial panel should be established with jurisdiction over antitrust and merger cases.

The issue was examined after the British employers' lobby, the Confederation of British Industry, considered a panel similar to the European Civil Service Tribunal should be set up to hear merger cases. The essential problem, according to the Confederation of British Industry is that antitrust and in particular merger cases take too long to be decided causing deals to fail.

The House of Lords Select Committee considered three possible options:
- Whether a new specialist court sitting below the Court of First Instance should be established pursuant to Article 225a EC;
- Whether a specialist Competition section or chamber sitting as part of the Court of First Instance should be created, or
- Whether no structural changes need be made but better use of existing Rules of Procedure and better case management by the Court of First Instance should be recommended.

The House of Lords Select Committee has now made its report public. You can down load it here.

It recommends that there should be better use of the existing Rules of Procedure and better case management. Suggestions are made as to how to achieve that. It considers that the creation of a new court or of a specialist panel or chamber within the Court of First Instance is unnecessary and would not result in any significant reduction in the duration of proceedings in merger cases. It does recommend that consideration be given to the creation of a specialist chamber for trademark cases which now make up a fairly considerable proportion of the Court of First Instance's case load, according to recent statistics. (For a recent post on judicial statistics, see here.