Extraterritorial Administrative Jurisdiction in Public International Law – The Antitrust Perspective

Abstract The number of competition authorities applying national competition law extraterritorially has grown significantly in recent years. This increasingly concerns cases in which several antitrust authorities and courts get involved in the same cases around the world simultaneously. This sometimes even concerns jurisdictions in which the infringement had minor or no appreciable effects at all. Such developments can increase the risk of international policy conflicts. The coherence, effectiveness, and efficiency of the international antitrust order, however, depend on predictable and reasonable approaches. This is especially true for instruments like remedies decisions, settlements, and leniency programs. An uncoordinated, multipolar enforcement landscape, where agencies pursue overlapping actions independently, risks undermining these tools. Against this backdrop, our study describes the prerequisites and limits of extraterritorial application of competition law, not least with regard to the “effects doctrine” and the idea of comity. Above all, the study explains that qualified requirements regarding the impact on domestic circumstances must be met in order to grant a right to extraterritorial application. The authority pursuing this claim bears the burden of proof for these requirements to be met.