Comments by the Business at OECD (BIAC) Competition Committee to OECD Competition Committee

Likewise, the case is often made that the advent of online review platforms can satisfy the information asymmetries prevalent for “experience” goods (where the consumer can only assess the quality of the service after the fact), but this pre-supposes that the reviewers are representative (not skewed towards the extremes, let alone subject to bot activity), that the reviews are meaningful (and not. [...] b) Not condemning haulage tariff-setting in Germany, on the basis that the professional organization could be characterized as a body of experts who were independent of the economic operators concerned and were required, under the law, to set tariffs taking into account not only the interests of the association and its members, but also the public interest and the interests of other undertakings a. [...] BIAC notes – and approves – the similarity and alignment of the Wouters approach with the analytical framework being considered for the assessment and advocacy interventions in the public sphere. [...] In both of these areas, the CJEU held that restrictions (in this case, a ban on multi-disciplinary partnerships for lawyers and accountants) could be justified on the grounds of legitimate public policy (in this case ensuring the impartiality of the legal profession) if the measures taken were both necessary and proportionate (and in the case of restrictions on competition, purely ancillary) to th. [...] BIAC calls for a clear, well-articulated, and visible analytical framework that can be applied to the specificities of each context and emphasizes the need and benefits of a very public and visible articulation of the analytical framework so that businesses can both self-assess and call out instances of potentially objectionable measures.