| 英文摘要 |
Before the end of 2022, Taiwan Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) published its long-awaited“White Paper on Competition Policy in the Digital Economy”, through which TFTC clarifies the challenges it has faced and its strategy and plans for the future in digital economy era. However, when referring to EU competition policy and competition law enforcement practices in the White Paper, some flaws could be seen in some inaccurate statements and fallacies would undermine the White Paper’s readability as well as TFTC’s authority on those highly specialized subject matters. The author of this paper mentioned and discussed those misunderstandings. Firstly, the anti-competitive behaviors in the EU Asus Case concerns the implementation of“fixed or minimum resale price maintenance (RPM)”, i.e., a price-related vertical restriction by the accused enterprise, rather than the horizontal concerted practices as prohibited in the Taiwan’s Fair Trade Act. There was no investigation involving the so-called hub-and-spoke arrangement in the EU Asus Case, either. Secondly, Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) outlaws the illegal horizontal or vertical coordinated behaviors which are based on meeting of minds between undertakings and manifested by a certain form of an agreement. That means this Article should not be confused with or misused for addressing problems relating to abuse of market power by dominant company’s unilateral actions. The incorrect referring to Article 101 TFEU within the context of“Abuse of Dominant Market Position”could be seen in the White Paper. Thirdly, due to a lack in comprehensive knowledge of EU institutions and legal hierarchy system, TFTC mistakenly quoted the EU regulations and guidelines. Due diligence and greater scope and depth of study into EU law are necessary before incorporating any EU rules or practices into our system. Hopefully, the points raised by the author can gain more attention from both the competent authority and the academia in Taiwan to help better improve the country’s competition law system and its enforcement. |
