Competition law
Competition law has been perceived as an essential part of the "social market economy" since the Treaty of Rome. Its main aims are to prevent monopolies abusing a dominant position, by prohibiting exploitative practices and potentially by breaking them up, to prevent anti-competitive mergers and takeovers occurring, and to criminalise cartels or collusive practices by independent firms. According to the Court of Justice, and the dominant view, the law aims to protect "an effective competition structure" to enhance consumer and social welfare, "aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment". The scope of European competition law is limited in three main ways: first, by ensuring that only "undertakings" are regulated. This will include any profit-making business, but the Court of Justice suggests it is limited to entities "engaged in an economic activity". The "economic" criterion suggests that, in general, organisations based on a principle of solidarity and not for profit will be exempt from competition law. Employees and trade unions are completely outside the scope of competition law, on a long-standing consensus view, because labour is not a commodity and the sellers of labour have inherently unequal bargaining power compared to business and employers. Second, trade between member states must be affected to at least an "appreciable" degree. Third, the law promotes fair competition, rather than unfair "cut-throat" competition. For example, in "Meca Medina and Majcen v Commission" the Court of Justice held that rules of the International Olympic Committee and the International Swimming Federation which prohibited drugs were outside the scope of competition law altogether. Although drugs could increase competitiveness, the "integrity and objectivity of competitive sport" was more important. In this way, the central task of competition law is to regulate the unequal bargaining power of private, profit-making businesses, rather than to affect the delivery of public services, collective action by social groups, or sound regulation of the economy.