Considerações de lealdade e equidade no direito da concorrência da União: breves reflexões

This article addresses briefly the multiple aims of the European competition rules, reflecting particularly on the role of fairness and distributive justice in the assessment of competition law cases. Although these issues are not new, there has been an increasing interest in the study of their role, mainly after the Euro crisis in 2008. We will notice that a broad concept of economic efficiency or consumer welfare already allows some distributive effects to be considered by the Competition Authorities and that fairness considerations are also present in several concepts used in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (namely in Article 102) as well as in the case law of the Court of Justice. Nevertheless, fairness considerations may also be relevant in other areas of competition law.