CONSEQUENCES OF VOIDNESS UNDER ARTICLE 81(2) OF THE EC TREATY AND VIETNAMESE LAW

Abstract: The creation of an internal market is one of the objectives of the EC Treaty, and the Competition provisions are crucial to the achievement of this goal. Article 81(1) EC Treaty prohibits agreements which may distort trade between the Member States. The consequence of violating such a prohibition is given by the Treaty itself in Article 81(2): voidness. However, the consequences of such voidness are not provided for under competition law&semic rather they follow from general Civil law rules. Further, according to Regulation 1/2003 and case-law, the consequences of infringing Articles 81 and 82 EC Treaty include not only voidness but also fines and damages. To research the consequences of voidness it would be better to compare it with other consequences under both civil and competition law. To achieve this, this thesis is divided into 7 parts: In the first part, there are some general remarks concerning the rationale for the choice of topic, its purpose and the methods used for researching and delimiting it. In the second and the third parts, unlawful agreements under European civil law and competition law are introduced. There is a very short introduction regarding general types of civil unlawful agreements in the second part. This serves as the basis for determining the types of unlawful competitive agreements in the third part. Consequences are analysed in the fourth and fifth parts. Voidness is considered in the fourth. Here the consideration of rules regarding voidness in civil law is used to find out the corresponding consequences of voidness under Article 81(2). Other consequences such as fines and damages will be presented in the fifth. Moving from the study of EU law, in the next part, I go on to study the consequences of voidness under Vietnamese law, the law of my country, in order to compare the two and find whether any lessons we can learned from the comparison. The final part contains a general conclusion and my proposals relating to both the EU and Vietnam.