Culture and competition policy in the European Union: Interplays and tensions

“If I had to do it all over again, I would begin with culture”. This well-known apocryphal quote, attributed to the Father of the European Union Jean Monnet, sheds light upon the pivotal role played by culture within the European integration process, which has been often reduced to merely political or economic aspects. Exactly with the aim of investigating the tensions potentially arising from these two different – although complementary – perspectives on European integration, this dissertation focuses on the complex dynamics between one of the pillars of the EU economic constitution, namely competition policy, and cultural policy, the latter being in principle based on a paradigm completely different from the economic one but pursuing goals which are nevertheless worth achieving, as also showed by the introduction of the so-called cultural mainstreaming clause, according to which the Union shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of the Treaties. More specifically, in the attempt to understand whether it is possible to find room for coexistence, and even for synergies, between such different fields of the European action, the integration of cultural considerations both in the public side of competition law – namely State aid discipline – and in its private side – namely mergers control and antitrust rules – will be thoroughly investigated, also in order to see whether the economic paradigm traditionally adopted when enforcing competition law could be deemed to be adequate to take into account the specificity of the cultural sector. Such an analysis will follow a legal, political and economic approach, and will tackle such issues by bridging doctrinal analysis, normative reflection, case-law scrutiny and review of the Commission’s decision-making practice, and that in order not to overlook the practical component of competition rules enforcement in order to assess how cultural and economic interests are balanced. Also, to offer new perspectives on the topics addressed by the dissertation, the scope of the latter will be broaden up by adding some references to the so-called geoblocking practices, in order to tackle issues which cannot be directly reconnected to the mere relationship between culture and competition but nevertheless appear to be relevant to underline possible new synergies between the cultural mainstreaming clause and antitrust provisions in the digital age.