Criminalization of Competition Law Enforcement
Economic and Legal Implications for the EU Member States
Edited by Katalin J. Cseres, Maarten Pieter Schinkel and Floris O.W. Vogelaar
Extract
Floris O.W. Vogelaar Looking back at a wonderful one and a half days, at the same time I have to look back in time. I remember that Claus Ehlermann and I met for the first time in the spring of 1969. He was then working at the Legal Service of the Commission, and I was a small and humble internee there, sharing an office with Graham Child and Cornelis Canenbley just opposite his. It is remarkable to note that 35 years later, we are still in the trade. However, the point to be made today is that in July 1969 the Commission took the Quinine cartel decision.1 That decision was the first in which the Commission ever imposed a fine, 50,000 Ecu at the time, and as I remember it everybody came out of their offices in the Loi Building of the Commission’s Legal Service onto the corridors to discuss this special event in sheer admiration. Apart from the fact that that fine was only paid much later in 1984, without any accrual of interest, it shows from where we came and where we are nowadays. I also remember that a short time thereafter an official from the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division came on secondment to the Legal Service, and later I believe also to DG IV, Joel Davidow. When, after a stay of six or eight months, he was back in America, he wrote an article reporting on what he had seen in...
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