Author: Rupprecht Podszun

We are very much looking forward to the 20th Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law, hosted by the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola University Chicago, USA, #ASCOLA2025. Professor Spencer Waller will be our host.

We had a huge number of submissions this year with more than 200 papers. All papers went through a double-blind peer review process. All scholars who have submitted a paper have been informed and we are looking forward to an exciting programme!

The conference website is now up and running – check it out here: https://www.luc.edu/law/academics/centersinstitutesandprograms/instituteforconsumerantitruststudies/events/ascola2025/

It has information on registration, accomodation, social events, travel, scholarships and so on. The website is constantly updated.

The Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) has submitted its comments to the European Commission on potential guidelines for the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR). The EU Commission had issued a call for evidence on the matter. The Foreign Subsidies Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/2560) shall ensure a “level playing field” for competition in the EU by “by establishing a harmonised framework to address distortions caused, directly or indirectly, by foreign subsidies”. It is the first time that ASCOLA has participated in such a call for stakeholder evidence or submitted such a statement to a law-making or enforcing body. Participation in the Working Group was open to all ASCOLA members. The effort was coordinated by our Vice-President Magali Eben.

The submission can be found here.

The Executive Committee and the Chicago hosts have decided to extend the deadline for submissions to 3 February 2025. We accept submissions of papers in response to our call for papers for the Annual Conference 2025 up to this date. All information can be found here: Next conference

Today, on 11 November 2024, we publish the Call for Papers for the 20th Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law, ASCOLA. The Conference will be held in Chicago, USA, at Loyola University from 26-28 June 2025. The local host is Professor Spencer Weber Waller, the Director of the Institute of Consumer Antitrust Studies. We welcome contributions in three streams. The deadline for submissions ends on 27 January 2025. All details can be found in the Call. This is a great opportunity to showcase to an international audience of academic experts your work on antitrust, competition law, competition economics and related issues!

You can find the Call for Papers here.

On 22 November 2024 at 2 pm CET (Brussels time) we invite all ASCOLA Members to join us for the second ASCOLA NOEL – the November Online Event Live!  We are pleased to announce the return of the ASCOLA NOEL event. The theme this year is “Critical Perspectives of Competition Law”. The event will be held on Zoom.  We are honoured to have three speakers to share with us their perspectives of competition law. Dina Waked of Sciences Po will give us her critical evaluation of competition law and economics. Kati Cseres of University of Amsterdam will speak about competition law and feminism. And finally, Gregory Day of University of Georgia will address the race problem in US antitrust.  (The photos show Dina, Kati and Greg from left to right). The discussant is Giorgio Monti, member of the ASCOLA Executive Committee. Join us for a critical reflection on competition policy – and for seeing the ASCOLA family from all over the world, at least virtually.  More information is available here.

The ASCOLA Annual Conference 2025 will take place in Chicago, IL, USA upon invitation by Professor Spencer Weber Waller. Mark your calendars – the conference will take place from 26-28 June 2025 at the Loyola University Chicago. It is the third time that ASCOLA will hold its Annual Conference in the USA.

Professor Waller heads the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at Loyola. The Call for Papers and the Conference Website will be published in due course here. The picture shows how Professor Waller invited the ASCOLA community to Chicago on the occasion of the ASCOLA Conference 2024 in Würzburg.

Liang Li is the winner of the 2024 Best Junior Paper Award of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). Her paper, presented at the Annual Conference in Würzburg, has the title: “A Reconception of Power in Competition Law with Its Application in the Digital Realm”, and it partly builds on her PhD thesis. Liang Li is an Associate Professor and an MA tutor at the China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing. The Jury was chaired by Fabiana Di Porto with David Gerber and Thomas Cheng as further jurors. The Jury said that the paper “is impressive for its willingness to challenge the existing understanding of something as fundamental as the concept of market power and proposes a workable alternative. It does so by providing a new and original theoretical framework and taxonomy, that might have several possible applications.” The photo shows Liang Li with Thomas Cheng, member of the jury and of the ASCOLA Executive Committee. The previous winners of the award can be found here.

The Board of ASCOLA has adopted Guiding Principles on Diversity, Inclusion and Social Safety at ASCOLA Events in its session on 4 July 2024. You can find the Guiding Principles here.

On June 11, 2024, Heike Schweitzer has died. She was a law professor at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and one of the most influential academic voices in European competition law. She was a member of the Board of ASCOLA, the Academic Society for Competition Law, and served as ASCOLA’s Vice President from 2016-2019.

After having worked at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute (with Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker), Heike Schweitzer was a professor at the European University Institute, at Mannheim University, at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt University. She was heavily involved in policy debates on the national and international level, e.g. as a Special Adviser on digital issues to Commissioner Margrethe Vestager (together with Jacques Crémer and Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye).

Heike is remembered by many in the academic community as a brillant thinker with a clear compass and many innovative ideas, deeply rooted in doctrine, but driving the field of competition law forward. To many at ASCOLA, she was also an admired colleague, an inspiring teacher and adviser – and a good friend. We will miss her.

Good news on the ASCOLA Conference 2024 in Würzburg, hosted by Florian Bien and Björn Becker: The conference website is up and running! It will be constantly updated.

You can check it out here: https://www.jura.uni-wuerzburg.de/lehrstuehle/bien/ascola/