4 - Block Exemption Regulations

Summary

This chapter focuses on the balancing embedded in Block Exemption Regulations (BERs). This balancing tool has received limited attention in scholarship, especially following modernisation. The chapter demonstrates that BERs were initially introduced to EU competition law to accommodate the enormous number of notifications that resulted from the set-up of the old enforcement regime. Although this workload-reducing function perished following the entry into force of Regulation 1/2003, the special BER instrument still remains in force. This chapter concludes that this may be related to the fact that BERs play, and have played in the past, an important role in addition to their administrative function. BERs, like Article 101(3) TFEU individual exemptions, may also reflect a form of balancing between competition and non-competition interests. They offer a pre-determined, clear balancing rule. This chapter shows that balancing under BERs takes place both in the adoption and the application of a BER. It discusses different types of BERs and the effects of modernisation of BERs in the late 1990s.