ZEW President Achim Wambach Presents Aims and Problems of 9th GWB Amendment to ZEW Sponsors' Association Members

In September 2016, the German government presented a bill setting out plans for what will be the ninth amendment to the German Act Against Restraints of Competition (GWB). What the government hopes to achieve with the ninth GWB amendment, as well as the amendment's potential legal and practical pitfalls, served as the focus of ZEW President Professor Achim Wambach's talk at an exclusive event held for members of the ZEW Sponsors' Association for Science and Practice as well as board members and directors of the Association's corporate members.

One of the things the German government hopes to achieve with this amendment is to adapt the GWB to keep up with the continuing digitalisation of the economy. The amendment would also implement EU compensation guidelines whilst at the same time closing up liability gaps in German anti-trust legislation, as Wambach, who as current Chair of the Monopolies Commission is directly involved in amending the law, explained in his talk.

According to Wambach, there are many welcome additions to the amendment, such as those which make it easier for the victims of monopolies to put forward a claim. "The fact that press co-operations are exempt from the ban on monopolies should, however, be viewed in a critical light," the ZEW President pointed out. This exemption is intended to protect press companies, who have struggled to keep up with changes in the market. "Protecting these companies from changes in the markets goes against the protective purpose of both competition law and merger control," Wambach added. He claimed that this has already set a problematic precedent, with other market participants now demanding to be made explicitly exempt from the monopoly ban in the new amendment.

This exclusive event for ZEW Sponsors' Association members was accompanied by a talk in the ZEW lecture series First-Hand Information on Economic Policy in which former ifo Institute president and professor emeritus of economics and public finance at the University of Munich Hans-Werner Sinn presented his 15 point programme for the re-establishment of Europe post-Brexit.