Bellamy & Child: European Community Law of Competition

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All practitioners dealing with commercial law will need access to a copy.This long-awaited fifth edition of what has become the standard work on E.C. competition law will be welcomed by all practitioners in this field. Much more than giving an overview of the law, Bellamy and Child has always taken a practical and commercial approach in analysing competition legislation. This is particularly the case in respect of the chapters on distribution agreements and intellectual property rights. The chapter on vertical agreements provides a most useful analysis of the new Block Exemption Regulation and accompanying guidelines, with the section on selective distribution being particularly detailed. The merger control chapter is excellent, with a good section on procedure, and a useful outline of the the national merger legislation of the EEA countries. A new chapter on 'Telecommunications' has now been added and , even though this area of the law is so fast developing tht it risks being out of date very quickly, the basic analysis and overview of the regulatory regime is extremely thorough and will remain invaluable as a basic principles' analysis. The need for a separate appendices volume is questionable, given the number of source books already on the market, most of which are regularly updated. It would have been more useful had it contained fully up to date and complete materials on the more specialist areas covered. For example the state aids material omits the Commission Notice on State Aid in the Form of Guarantees ([2000] O.J. C71/14, summarised in the text at para. 19-028) which is a document of some importance to advisers on many public/private projects throughout the Community. It also fails to note the changes this Notice has made to the 1993 Commission Communication (which is reproduced). The introduction of the Competition Act 1998 means that the discussion of the substantive provisions of E.C. competition law will also be very valuable for lawyers practising in the United Kingdom, since the 1998 Act provides for the application of relevant principles of E.C. law on questions of competition in deciding issues on the application of the prohibitions in the Act, whic are modelled on Articles 81 and 82.This long-awaited fifth edition of what has become the standard work on E.C. competition law will be welcomed by all practitioners in this field.Philip Moser After a gap of some eight years, the fifth edition of what is generally considered the leading practitioners' textbook on competition law has arrived. As Sir Christopher Bellamy QC points out in his foreword on behalf of both original authors, this is the most substantital revision of Bellamy and Child to be undertaken since the ground-breaking first edition in 1973. Peter Roth QC leads a team of 19 contributors, many of whom are highly distinguished in the field. They have completely overhauled the text in what has become a more complex area of the law even than it was eight years ago - certainly more complex than it was 28 years ago. Since the 1993 edition, we have seen the general changes wrought for example by the Treaty of Amsterdam and the growing importance of the Convention of Human Rights (both of which are dealt with), but also the competition-specific changes of a revised Regulation 17, the new Commission Notices and the new Merger Regulation (to name but a few). As both Sir Christopher and Peter Roth remark in their introductory comments, it has also been necessary to accommodate the policy change in competition law. The book comes in two volumes, a hardback volume I containing the main text, and a soft-cover volume II containing the appendices. The appendices in volume II are an extremely useful collecition of all the main regulations, notices and treaty provisions, making the volume an invaluable tool when working on a competition case. No one should buy this book only for the appendices, however. On the other hand, everyone whose practice involves competition law should buy it for the practical approach and comprehensive coverage provided in volume I. It provides a regular 'how to' guide for each area of competition law. The fifth edition follows the line taken by the previous editions in that it aims principally to state the law, rather than offer detailed analysis or comment. The same applies to the examiniation of the leading cases, which are helpfully dealt with under each relevant section. In this huge area of EC law, even as such an economical approach has resulted in 1,288 pages of text. Sometimes the approach means that clarity is sacrificed in the interest of brevity, and the way the 'two-thirds rule' in mergers is dealt with in four and a half lines is, perhaps a case in point. On the whole, however, the reader feels reassured that all the essentials of the law are contained in this one work, and knows to turn to the articles and texts referred to in the footnotes for a more detailed treatment of each subject. The text is not only comprehensive, it is right up-to-date (to 1 January 2001), including for example the Aeroports de Paris decision of 12 December 2000 (and the fact that it is on appeal, as Case C-82/01P). The coverage of the case law includes not only all the important developments in the field of competition law, but also relatively obscure cases such as Sockel v. The Body Shop. In certain instances that authors have also anticipated developments, such as the Treaty of Nice (it remains to be seen whether they will have dones so in vain in that particular case). Occasionally the index leaves something to be desired (relatively straightforward terms such as 'know-how licensing' are absent, and some - such as 'distribution agreements' or 'Form A/B' - are quite hard to find), but that in no way detracts from the overall practicality and authority of the book. At GBP240 the price is, alas, not unusual for a practitioners' text, but no serious competition law practitioner can afford to be without access to this book. The authors should be congratulated on a successful update right up to the first day of the twenty-first century.B&C is not a practitioner's handbook', but rather the EU's equivalent of a bible on competition law. To there credit, B&C have turned their work into a venerable institution.'The new edition of Bellamy & Child is now indispensable for anyone advising on EC competition law and is a joy to use.'.