Episode 32- Justin Lindeboom - Formalism in Competition Law and the Draghi Moment

Episode 32- Justin Lindeboom - Formalism in Competition Law and the Draghi Moment

In this episode , Anush Ganesh and Kena Zheng are joined by Dr. Justin Lindeboom, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Groningen, whose work sits at the crossroads of legal theory, EU constitutional law, and competition law. Educated at Groningen, UCL, and Harvard Law School (where he was a Fulbright Scholar), Justin is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of European Papers and an Associate Member of UCL's Centre for Law, Economics and Society. We dig into two of his papers- "Formalism in Competition Law" (Journal of Competition Law and Economics) and his dynamic-positivist reading of the Google Shopping judgment (Journal of European Competition Law and Practice) . We discuss what the Draghi Report means for the architecture of the internal market and competition rules. Along the way: why formalism is competition law's "scarecrow," what Frederick Schauer's distinction between rule-based and all-things-considered decision-making tells us about per se and by-object categories, why effects-based approaches may reproduce formalism rather than escape it, and how the DMA fits the picture. We close on the harder constitutional questions- discretion, the legitimacy of novel theories of harm under Article 102, Justin's "rullifiability" criterion, and whether norms like systemic coherence and procedural legitimacy genuinely constrain enforcement or merely redescribe the problem. A conversation for anyone interested in how EU competition law is reasoned, structured, and held to account.

Episode 31- Anna Tzanaki - The Future of EU Merger Control and the DMA's Institutional Design

In this episode, Anush Ganesh and Jasper van den Boom speak with Dr Anna Tzanaki, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Leeds and Affiliate Fellow of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Anna's research sits at the intersection of merger control, digital markets regulation, and institutional design across the EU, US, and UK. We discuss three of her recent pieces. First, her Antitrust Law Journal article on killer acquisitions and EU merger control, which examines why the Court of Justice rejected the Commission's repurposing of Article 22 in Illumina/Grail and what that judgment reveals about the constitutional limits of Commission discretion. Second, her JECLAP article co-authored with Julian Nowag, which maps the DMA's institutional architecture onto a compliance-enforcement continuum and interrogates the virtues of its procedural flexibility in counterbalancing the fixed nature of its substantive obligations on designated gatekeepers. Third, her ProMarket piece responding to the Commission's draft EU Merger Guidelines, which she characterises as "Schrödinger's cat" -- full of possibilities but short on certainties. Across the conversations, Anna posits for a more balanced view that takes into account context and institutional complementarities to alleviate tensions between institutional flexibility and the demands of legal certainty, principled constraint, and democratic accountability. Whether the current direction of EU competition law is getting that balance right is the question we put to Anna at the close of the episode.

Episode 30- Michal Gal - The Limits of Competition Law: Lessons for the future

In this episode, recorded in person at the SCiDA Conference 2026, Anush Ganesh sits down with Professor Michal Gal, Professor of Law at the University of Haifa and one of the world's foremost competition law scholars, as well as ASCOLA President between 2016 and 2023, to discuss her decades of research on competition law, algorithms, and digital markets. They explore how the "winner takes all" dynamic has evolved, drawing on her most recent work on the topic with Raz Agranat, before turning to her co-authored research with Jorge Padilla on how algorithms reshape competition enforcement. Michal then reflects on her influential work with Dan Rubinfeld and Oshrit Aviv on zero-price markets and the most pressing concerns in data markets today. The conversation revisits her prescient article on algorithmic consumers, which she described at the SCiDA Conference 2026 as more relevant than ever, before closing by asking whether radical restorative remedies have a role in the current enforcement landscape, with reference to her paper co-authored with Nicholas Petit.

Episode 29- Julian Nowag - Sustainability, Algorithmic Predation, and Global Antitrust Expertise

In this episode, Anush Ganesh and Kena Zheng are joined by Dr Julian Nowag, Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong and Lund University, Managing Editor of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, and Associate at the Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy. Julian is one of the most versatile scholars working in competition law today, with major contributions spanning sustainability, digital markets, and artificial intelligence. His monograph Global Antitrust and Sustainability (OUP, 2025) maps how competition authorities around the world engage with sustainability as a regulatory objective across economics, law, and enforcement. His co-authored article with Thomas Cheng, Algorithmic Predation and Exclusion, won a Concurrences Antitrust Writing Award in 2023 and has reshaped how scholars and practitioners think about data-driven exclusionary strategies. The conversation covers the contested place of sustainability in competition analysis, whether classical predatory pricing doctrine can handle the precision and scale that algorithmic targeting enables, and how the DMA, DMCCA, and Section 19a GWB interact with the broader trajectory of the field.

Episode 28- SCiDA Conference Expert Panel on DMCCA and Section 19a GWB - Magali Eben, Konstantina Bania, Jan-Frederick Göhsl and Björn Christian Becker

In this episode, recorded on 27 May 2026 at the SCiDA Conference in Düsseldorf, Anush Ganesh and Sarah Hinck co-chair a plenary panel exploring the UK's Strategic Market Status regime under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act and Germany's Section 19a GWB. Magali Eben (University of Glasgow; Vice-President, ASCOLA) and Konstantina Bania (Brunel University; Geradin Partners) examine the CMA's early moves under the DMCCA, from the Google and Apple SMS designations to the newly launched Microsoft investigation, and ask whether the CMA is building a coherent enforcement strategy or risking fragmentation across its growing toolkit. Bjorn Christian Becker (Humboldt University of Berlin) and Jan-Frederick Gohsl (University of Munster) then take a deep dive into the regulatory architecture and recent case law under Section 19a, including the Bundeskartellamt's Amazon decision. The panel discussed how the bespoke, discretion-heavy design of the DMCCA and Section 19a compares with the DMA's prescriptive model, and whether that flexibility is a regulatory strength or a source of legal uncertainty. The discussion moves also to the strikingly different approaches to private enforcement: the UK's rapidly expanding collective proceedings docket against digital platforms running alongside public DMCCA enforcement, set against Germany's deliberate restriction of private Section 19a claims to cases preceded by a Bundeskartellamt prohibition decision. The panel also engages on whether either regime is equipped to address competition challenges raised by AI, foundation models, and AI-powered services, or whether entirely new legislative thinking is needed.