Price squeezing and predatory pricing. Economic theory and judicial and regulatory practice

The article presents the concept of predatory pricing and price squeezing and the economic background to it, before examining what judicial practice has developed and what regulatory intervention there has been. The question of investigating predatory pricing and price squeezes has come to the fore recently because it has become clear since the liberalization of the network public services that liberalization and an end to exclusivity of rights are insufficient to produce the desired measure of competition. After liberalization, it was recognized legally in the EU that a new, more co-reliant and cooperative relation would have to develop in branch and competition regulation. Regulatory changes are taking two directions. On the one hand, greater emphasis is being given in branch regulation to the principles of competition regulation. On the other, the role of branch experts is likely to increase in some areas, such as takeovers, mergers and restriction of competition. A common feature of the regulatory reforms is that well-founded regulatory decisions call for increasingly subtle analysis, in which economic analyses are playing an ever more important role.