EU Merger Control and the Development of an Alternative to the Consumer Welfare Standard: Incorporating the Union’s Social Values

The modernisation of EU competition law was brought about over twenty years ago by the adoption of the consumer welfare standard. This standard requires an almost unitary focus on the price effects of mergers, to the exclusion of any social or non-economic factors of relevance. However, the law’s refusal to consider equality or sustainability, for example, is incongruous with the broader aims of the EU. Underlying it is a neoliberal ideology based on a reluctance to intervene on markets, and the flawed assumption of market self-correction. The objective of the thesis is to propose EU competition law’s ‘second modernisation’, whereby the Commission would revitalise the law by shifting from the consumer welfare standard and reorient it towards the social values underpinning the Union. The thesis argues that the continued application of the consumer welfare standard, a cornerstone of EU competition law, should be reconsidered as it fails to align with the EU’s constitutional framework and the broader interests of European citizens, which extend beyond cheap consumption at the expense of all else. In order to establish this, the thesis seeks to demonstrate the flaws of the consumer welfare standard, while also indicating how it fails to conform with citizens’ interests. It highlights how the more economic approach is no longer consonant with the EU Treaties due to its singular prioritisation of economic interests and refusal to integrate social considerations. Most significantly, the thesis advances a novel test to replace the consumer welfare standard (the ‘socially conscious consumer standard’) which may be regarded as attempt to find a better balance between economic and non-economic considerations in competition law.