Research On The Exemption Of European Community Competition Law

Exemption is an essential part of European Community Competition Law(EC Competition Law) system. This paper is about the exemption of EC Competition Law. From Article 81 of the EC Treaty, some block exemptions and guidelines about the applicability of exemption, some exemption related questions will be introduced, such as the contents, criteria and the experience what we can learn from EC.The first part talks about the general theories of exemption of EC Competition Law, which including the implication of exemption, the sources of exemption on EC Competition Law. Besides this, it also introduces the feature and the value it chases to.The second part is the key of the paper, it gives an detailed introduction to the exemption criteria and the applicable procedures. Article 81 of EC Treaty and a series of block exemptions, Commission Notices and Guidelines on the applicability of Article 81 made the exemption law system. Paragraph 1 of Article 81 decides the jurisdiction and paragraph 3 of Article 81 is the exemption criteria. Taking economics analysis into exemption, on the basis of the exemption sources such as block exemption and Commission Notices, made the exemption criteria more definite and applicable.After the Council Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Article 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty came into force , some fundamental changes have been brought to the exemption system, which including ending of the notification , decentralized the declaration of exemption and strengthened the power of supervise for commission.The Anti-Trust Law of our country has just passed with no any exemption related acts. The advanced EC exemption experience will be a model to the construction of our system. In the last part, some suggestions about our exemption will be proposed .