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from Part I - Should environmental goals play a role in EU competition law and policy?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
A third and final argument to examine, in asking whether environmental considerations should be excluded from EU competition policy, is an economic one. While the previous arguments have assumed, as is standard practice, that environmental considerations constitute non-economic factors, this chapter investigates the possibility of taking environmental considerations into account in the economic calculus of competition decisions, i.e., the possibility of achieving Article 11 TFEU environmental integration within the framework of competition economics. After looking at the limits of the welfare concept and drawing on the theories and techniques of environmental and ecological economics, its conclusion is that this is possible in cases where the predicted environmental benefits or damage resulting from the transaction or behaviour at issue are reasonably quantifiable. The implications of this conclusion are that the current drive towards a more economic approach at the Commission does not necessarily mean the exclusion of environmental factors.
The section does not purport to engage in complex economic modelling, which would go beyond the scope of the present work. Rather, its aims are far more modest: it seeks to apply some of the rich and multifarious literature on environmental economics in the context of EU competition policy. It is structured in five parts. First, it recalls the role traditionally attributed to the environment in neo-classical welfare economics; secondly, it looks at the limits of the concept of welfare or utility as a goal of competition policy under standard neo-classical analysis; thirdly, it examines the possibility of taking environmental considerations into account in measuring utility using the approach of environmental economics, and the techniques of valuing environmental resources developed within that discipline; fourthly, it examines the potential implications of the approach of a further economic discipline, ecological economics. Finally, it asks whether these economic techniques can, and should, be applied in the context of EU competition policy.
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