IECL Lunchtime Seminar - "Data-driven antitrust enforcement" and "The Charter, the Pillar and the Legislation"

Professor Viktoria H. S. E. Robertson, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Computational antitrust tools can support competition authorities in the detection of antitrust infringements. However, these tools require the availability of suitable data sets in order to produce reliable results. In this proof-of-concept study, we focused on ways to detect resale price maintenance with the help of publicly available data. Based on web scraping of a price comparison website, we created two interactive dashboards that provide valuable information to competition authorities. To further drive computational antitrust, however, market data needs to be publicly accessible and provided in a more structured format.

Dr Lorenzo Cecchetti, LUISS University

Although the ‘concretisation’ of fundamental rights within the context of the European Union (‘EU’) law-making process is undoubtedly an important avenue for giving effect to them, especially with regard to fundamental social rights, this phenomenon is still considerably undertheorized in EU law due to, inter alia, the vertical allocation of competences between the Union and the Member States. As far as EU social law is concerned, however, the European Pillar of Social Rights and the von der Leyen Commission’s Action Plan have been the most important developments in terms of the Union’s legislative activity aimed at protecting fundamental social rights in the EU legal order after their constitutionalisation in the Charter. Against this backdrop, by taking some of the pieces of social legislation recently adopted by the EU as a case study, I will present my research agenda on the fundamental rights implication of Union legislation in social matters, which forms part of a larger research project aimed at reappraising the fundamental social rights’ role in the EU constitutional architecture.