Professor Ioannis Lianos provides evidence to EU ECON Committee on TTIP

Professor of Global Competition Law and Public Policy, Ioannis Lianos, has delivered evidence on the competition law provisions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels.

The controversial trade and investment partnership is currently being negotiated between the US and the European Commission on behalf of the EU.

During the committee meeting, which took the form of a two-part workshop, Professor Lianos joined a panel of speakers including Hendrik Bourgeois, Head of the TTIP Task Force at the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU, Blanca Rodriguez Galindo, Head of the International Relations Unit at the Directorate-General Competition at the European Commission, and Christophe Kiener, Lead Negotiator for the European Commission on TTIP.

In his evidence, Professor Lianos examined the competition law provisions in the draft of the TTIP circulated by the European Commission and discussed the possible implications for each of the sections of the projected agreement.

Exploring the similarities and differences between EU and US competition law, Professor Lianos observed that the main objective of the agreement is not simply to enhance cooperation between competition authorities in both jurisdictions, since cooperation already takes place to a certain extent between competition authorities in the EU and US, and that further cooperation could take place independently without needing to be integrated into a trade and investment agreement.

He pointed out that the primary aim of the TTIP should be instead to develop a model for the world that would aim to influence the models of competition law in new jurisdictions, including in the emerging economies of the BRICS states; Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Further information

Watch the Committee Meeting in full on the European Parliament website (Professor Lianos appears at 1:30:11)

Download Professor Lianos’s presentation to the Committee (pdf)

Find out more about the TTIP on the European Commission website