Category: Allgemein

The General Assembly of ASCOLA has elected a new board and a new executive committee in its meeting in Athens on 30 June 2023. After seven years in office, professor Michal Gal of Haifa University stepped down as president. Rupprecht Podszun of the University of Düsseldorf who had been the Vice President since 2019 was elected as her successor. He will run ASCOLA with a team: Vice Presidents are Peter Picht (Zurich, VP for finances), Thomas Cheng (Hong Kong), Magali Eben (Glasgow), Giorgio Monti (Tilburg) and Wendy Ng (Melbourne).

The Assembly thanked Michal Gal for her hard work and her dedication to ASCOLA. During her presidency – professor Gal was elected in Leiden in 2016 – membership of ASCOLA nearly tripled to now 630 members. Michal Gal led ASCOLA with passion. Members gave her standing ovations.

With the new Executive Committee ASCOLA wishes to broaden its reach internationally and consolidate the organisation. Professor Podszun promised that the new team will try to keep the standards of excellence in research but also preserve the community feeling that is so characteristic of the ASCOLA group.

The Assembly also elected a new Board, the larger body that carries the responsibility. The current members were re-elected and new members added that represent the wider geographic range: Zeynep Ayata (Turkey), Mor Bakhoum (Senegal), Magali Eben (UK), Juan David Gutierrez (Colombia), Vikas Kathuria (India), Wendy Ng (Australia), Jasminka Pecotic Kaufman (Croatia) and Masako Wakui (Japan) were elected to the Board. Also, it was decided that the respective organiser of the conference is co-opted as a member of the board.

Three ASCOLA members were appointed Directors for special projects: Fabiana Di Porto (Director for Best Junior Paper Award), Viktoria Robertson (Director for Scholarships) and Jurgita Malinauskaite (Director for Mentoring).

With the new governance structure and people ASCOLA looks well-equipped to manage the next steps in its new decade: In Athens, members celebrated 20 years of ASCOLA. The organisation was founded in Munich in 2003. Former President Paul Nihoul (now a judge at the European Court) shared thoughts in a speech on the occasion.

At the ASCOLA Conference 2023 in Athens, Greece, Elias Deutscher (University of East Anglia) and Stavros Makris (University of Glasgow) won the Best Junior Paper Award for their joint paper “Merger Control and Sustainability”. The jury consisted of Fabiana Di Porto (Salento, chair), Thomas Cheng (Hong Kong) and David Gerber (Chicago-Kent). The picture shows Fabiana Di Porto, Elias Deutscher, Stavros Makris and ASCOLA president Michal Gal at the Awards Ceremony.

The organising team of #ASCOLA2023, our Annual Conference on competition law and policy, has set up a conference website. You can register now for participating in this very special competition law event!

Please find the website here:

https://ascola2023uoa.epant.gr/

The conference will be held in Athens, Greece, from 29 June 2023 to 1 July 2023. We thank the local organisers, professors Ioannis Lianos and Alexandra Mikroulea for their great preparatory work! The conference is open for all ASCOLA Members. You can become a member if you are eligible according to our criteria – in particular we only accept antitrust scholars. For more information please consult our Join Ascola page!

The Call for Papers for the Annual Conference 2023 can be found here. Time for submission has elapsed.

Mark your calendars: The 18th ASCOLA Conference will take place in Athens, Greece, from 29 June to 1 July 2023. ASCOLA has now published the Call for Papers which you can find here: ASCOLA 2023 Call for Papers.

Deadline for proposals is 27 January 2023. We are looking forward to many awesome submissions – and to a great conference, to be organised by ASCOLA with the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens!

ASCOLA members Kay Jebelli and Friso Bostoen have a podcast on competition matters that is definitely worth listening to: “Monopoly Attack”, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your daily dose. A good start could be the report on the ASCOLA Conference 2022 in Porto that Kay & Friso put together. You can find Monopoly Attack for instance here or here.

In the D’Kart blog, one of the more entertaining blogs on competition law & policy, our Vice President Rupprecht Podszun wrote his review of the Conference – available (including photos) here.

Enjoy the insights!

Marsden’s “Antitrust Paradise” Lyrics

Francesco Ducci is the winner of the 2022 Best Junior Paper Award of ASCOLA, the Academic Society for Competition Law. Francesco is a scholar at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. The jury decided that his paper on “Randomized Access to Digital Bottlenecks” stands out. The jury wrote:

“The piece is highly insightful, bringing new analytical perspectives to a problem that has been relatively little noticed. By identifying the shareability potential of digital rankings and their non-rivalrous nature, the paper suggests using randomized rotation in the design of remedies. (…) All in all, it is a piece of creative and insightful scholarship into an area that deserves to be illuminated, and it brings to bear a well-developed analytical framework that represents first-class scholarship.”

Members of the jury were law professors Fabiana Di Porto (Salento), Thomas Cheng (Hong Kong) and David Gerber (Chicago-Kent). The picture shows Francesco Ducci with Fabiana Di Porto as speaker for the jury on a boat in Porto where the winner was announced during the 2022 Annual Conference.

We are very proud to announce the keynote speaker of this year’s conference: Ascola will host Chief Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Judge Wood is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. She will speak on “Divergent Paths for Global Competition Law: Top Down or Bottom Up?” The talk will be given during the Ascola Annual Conference 2022 in Porto on Friday, 1 July 2022, at 2 pm local time.

All information on the conference can be found on the conference website:

ASCOLA 2022: 17th annual conference | FD-PORTO-WEBSITE (ucp.pt)

The Conference website for the Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) 2022 is now up & running:

ASCOLA 2022: 17th annual conference | FD-PORTO-WEBSITE (ucp.pt)

The Conference will be held from 30 June to 2 July 2022 in Porto, Portugal, at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Rua de Diogo Botelho, 1327). It will start with the welcoming by President Prof. Michal Gal and host Prof. Sofia Pais at 1 pm local time and kick of with a panel on mentoring, chaired by Vice President Prof. Rupprecht Podszun. Over the next days, many talks will follow in breakout sessions with ASCOLA scholars from around the world!

The official programme will end on Saturday at 1 pm, but a lunch and an optional trip will follow. All information is available on the Conference Website. You can find the programme here.

The 17th Annual Conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law, ASCOLA, will take place as an in-person event in Porto, Portugal from 30 June to 2 July, 2022. The papers to be presented have been picked by a team of peer reviewers in a double blind process from a record number of submissions. You can be sure to experience three days of intense learning & discussing in the friendly atmosphere of the ASCOLA family. Local organisers are Sofia Pais and her team at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto. Make sure to make your bookings. We will inform you here and on Twitter and LinkedIn once the Conference website has been set up! We are looking forward to seeing you!