Dr Or Brook has won funding for 'The Priority-Setting Project'

The Priority-Setting Project aims to rethink EU and national competition law enforcement.

Dr Or Brook from the Center for Business Law and Practice in the University of Leeds and Dr Kati Cseres from the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance have won funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account for their project ‘The Priority-Setting Project: Rethinking EU And National Competition Law Enforcement.’

Effective enforcement of competition law is vital for the functioning of markets and economies. As competition authorities are constrained by scarce financial and human resources, they cannot effectively enforce every possible infringement. Setting clear and effective priorities is an essential precondition for reserving society’s resources to the most harmful infringements. Credible enforcement priorities build independent and accountable competition authorities, which form a fundamental building block for our economies.

Nevertheless, the theoretical foundations and practices underlying the setting of enforcement priorities are vastly unexplored in the EU: they remain neglected by many decision-makers and legislators; most of the European competition authorities are not held accountable for their prioritisation choices, which are often not subject to judicial review. Moreover, priority-setting is a largely uncharted area in the EU competition law scholarship.

The Priority Setting Project aims to fill this gap. It brings together academics from various disciplines and stakeholders from the EU’s 28 competition authorities to discuss and disseminate the findings of a novel empirical study systematically analysing the competition authorities’ priority-setting policies and practices. Through a wide array of impact activities – including a workshop, training seminars, policy report, and academic publications – it builds an important network to rethink the enforcement priorities and influences reform.