This reference work examines the procedure and practice relating to commercial agreements and trade association practices under UK and EC competition laws. It first covers procedure in both the UK and EC, and then provides a detailed comparative analysis of all the major types of commercial agreements and trade association practices in both UK and EC law. Since much of competition law is, in practice, administered by administrative rather than judicial bodies, full treatment is given to the informal administrative solutions applied by the authorities. However, as an increasing amount of competition law is subject to litigation, there is also in-depth analysis of all the major cases. There is also a full discussion of the EC block exemptions and recent developments in UK competition law.

The Competition Act 1998 makes fundamental changes to United Kingdom competition law,introducing two new prohibitions based on European Community rules. In September 1998, the Centre for the Law of the European Union at University College London hosted a conference, chaired by Judge David Edward of the European Court of Justice, to discuss the Europeanisation of United Kingdom competition law. This book brings together the papers delivered at the conference, together with additional papers exploring the effect of the Competition Act. The papers will be of interest to all practitioners, officials and academics working in the are of competition law. Contributors: Judge Christopher Bellamy (Court of First Instance of the European Communities), Mrs Margaret Bloom, (Director of Competition Policy, The Office of Fair Trading), Nicholas Green QC (Brick Court Chambers), Donald A. Hay (Jesus College, Oxford and the Institute of Economics and Statistics, Oxford), Professor Valentine Korah (University College, London), Aidan Robertson (Brick Court Chambers), John Swift QC (Monckton Chambers).