AG Kokott's Opinion in the Case Toshiba: Towards an "Extreme Decentralization" of the EU Competition Law Enforcement?

​​I. Introduction

"How many competition authorities in Europe may deal with one and the same cartel and impose penalties on the participating undertakings?"²⁾²⁾Advocate General Kokott's Opinion in the Case C-17/10 , Toshiba Corporations and Others, delivered on 8.9.2011. Para 1. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:62010 CC0017:EN:HTML (5.10.2011). At a first view, the reader might think that this quotation is taken from an academic article published approximately a decade ago, discussing the "decentralization" of the EU competition law enforcement under Regulation 1/2003.³⁾³⁾Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty. OJ L-1, 4.1.2003, p1-25. Indeed, this sentence constitutes the first paragraph of the Opinion delivered on 8.9.2011 by Advocate General (AG) Kokott in the case Toshiba (C-17/10 ), a reference for preliminary ruling which is currently pending before the Court of Justice (CJ). The case has the potential to become a land-mark Judgements, which could re-define the multilevel system of competition law enforcement designed by Reg 1/2003, by further decentralizing the enforcement of the EU competition law at the national level. Due to the relevance of the case, this paper analyzes the AG Opinion, in order to assess which could be consequences of the CJ's future Judgement on the multilevel enforcement system of the EU competition policy.