Competition Law in Times of Crises: Is State Back?

Chair: Dr Qianlan Wu 

This paper explores unprecedented and divergent cluster of challenges facing Competition Law and Policy as a system. It is a combination of a mapping exercise – identifying new phenomena and rends, appreciating their nature and critical analysis of suitability of them being addressed within this particular system of law.

These include a number of cross-border challenges—from digital disruption, over Covid lockdowns and undermining of the pre-existing supply chains (and, indeed, business module of stockless manufacturing), the war waged by Russia in Ukraine (and the strategic undermining of food supply chains), the inflation arising from Covid and the war, as well as the even larger and more long term  elephant in the room—that is, the climate change, and all these taking place in the significantly changing international environment, with the departure from multilateralism and rediscovery of the role of the state and growing economic nationalism of various polities (inclusive of the rise of subsidies).

The perspective of the paper is global—underlying the importance of embracing cross-border business activities in the regulatory framework.