Prof. Suzanne Kingston will be participating in a conference “Sustainability and Competition Policy: 
Bridging two Worlds to Enable a Fairer Economy” in Brussels, Thursday October 24th.

The conference will examine the connection between competition law and sustainability, in line with an overall examination of how to align EU policies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to fight against increasing social disparities and improve the wellbeing of people while remaining within the environment limits of the planet.

The conference will be live streamed – tune in here.

Professor Kingston will speak on a panel (at 3.40pm Irish time) entitled “The Way Forward: How Can Competition Policy Enable Rather Than Obstruct Sustainability?”

The panel discussion promises to be lively, and will delve into questions concerning:

  • How can competition policy improve the way it delivers benefits to
    society? What are the pitfalls in considering competition policy in
    (relative) isolation from other policy fields?
  • The question of inter-relationship between different fields of law, e.g.
    how did trade law incorporate environmental and other sustainability
    concerns and what about other fields of EU economic law? Is it fruitful
    to think in terms of hierarchy of sources of law, and what are the
    alternatives?
  •  Can economics help, and how? E.g., how to (better) measure consumer
    benefits beyond price, thus including sustainability, environmental,
    public interest values? Is there scope for greater reliance on behavioural
    economics to recognise that consumers are also citizens who care about
    societal values?
  • On the technical side, what is the most promising route to better factor
    in sustainability objectives in competitive assessments? What are the
    practical ways to advance: test cases, formal and informal opinions,
    guidelines enabling confident self-assessment, government mandated
    initiatives?

Many thanks to The European Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Fair Trade Advocacy Office, the Global Competition Law Centre of the College of Europe and the Center for Economics, Law and Society at University College of London, with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development for organizing this conference.