EU Competition Law: Tools for Assessing Business Agreements, 2017 Edition

The goal of Tools for Assessing Business Agreements is to provide high-level practical and conceptual guidance and general training for use in understanding the concepts and protocols involved in vetting business agreements for EU competition law compliance. Tools for Assessing Business Agreements aims to demystify and facilitate application of the European Commission's various sets of guidelines and block exemption regulations.

Some topics in Tools for Assessing Business Agreements include: determining the relevant market; understanding and applying the concept of an "undertaking", examining EU competition law issues related to different categories of business agreements; understanding the EU antitrust "safe harbor" provisions, and evaluating key EU Commission Guidelines (e.g., Vertical Restraints Guidelines, Technology Transfer Guidelines, etc.) with regard to business agreements.

Tools for Assessing Business Agreements aims to provide a practically oriented frame of reference for reaching a working hypothesis on whether a business agreement reduces rivalry resulting in likely appreciable anticompetitive effects and, if so, whether those effects are outweighed by pro-competitive efficiency gains benefitting customers.