JECLAP Special Issue for the Rubén Perea Award (3rd Year, 2023)

For yet another edition, the Award in memory of our late dear friend, student, and colleague, Rubén Perea Molleda, has produced a series of excellent articles, written by a variety of brilliant young academics and practitioners. This new cohort embodies Rubén’s values, which find expression in the outstanding quality of the articles, full of rigour, enormous dedication, creativity, persistence in the face of intricate challenges, in-depth analysis, and the ability to artfully distil complex problems into clarity of thought and insight. We encourage the authors to keep these values present in their professional and personal endeavours, with the same determination, humility, and generosity that distinguished Rubén.

Now in its 3rd year, the Rubén Perea Prize has become an institution in the EU competition law sphere. While it reminds us of Rubén constantly, the prize itself became an important platform for young competition lawyers or economists to bring forward innovative ideas and cutting-edge competition research. European Commission’s EVP and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has kindly accepted to give out the awards at her offices. It is an honour to be able to witness the new faces of competition law in action. We encourage all young researchers and practitioners to participate in the upcoming editions!

Listening to competition law students or young professionals is not about giving them a stage, it is rather about allowing experienced enforcers and practitioners to obtain a pair of binoculars to see further on the horizon. Young minds bring diversity to the table, saying that one odd comment, which no one dares making, but that can bring competition policy to a better place.

The members of the jury were Lena Hornkohl, David Pérez de Lamo, Alfonso Lamadrid de Pablo, Michele Piergiovanni, Damien Gerard, and Gianni De Stefano. Being in the jury has been a true honour: while readings about SEP-licensing, one was relieved in reading something that was not totally on the patent holders’ side or the challengers’ side; while going through the piece on liability of corporate groups, one could take note of the few times where the involved undertaking was able to rebut the decisive-influence presumption; while learning how the Artificial Intelligence Act can address shortcomings of AI-screening of cartel, one could feel the urge to reach out to colleagues in data analysis units of competition authorities. And the percentage of interest in that one merger in the gaming industry is not at all unsignificant, who would have thought. Rubén, you make all of this happen!

We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our gratitude to the supporters of the award: the blog Chillin’ Competition and the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice (JECLAP), and look forward to many more successful editions.

The deadline to submit papers for the upcoming and 4th edition of the Rubén Perea Award is 30 September 2023, 23.59 Brussels time. If you are under 30 years old at the time of the deadline, we would very much welcome your contribution (up to 15,000 words, including footnotes; no bibliography needed). Prior to submission, please make sure your paper follows the JECLAP House Style rules, which can be found at https://antitrustlair.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/house-style-rules-final.pdf. Please submit the paper via this link: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jeclap (as you go through the submission process, make sure that in Step 5, you answer YES to the question ‘Is this for a special issue’? and indicate that it is for the Rubén Perea Award).

If you are reading this and do not fulfil the criteria for participating in the Rubén Perea Award, please feel free to promote this opportunity amongst your junior colleagues or students. It is about young and diverse, and therefore better, competition law enforcement, policy, and practice.

JECLAP editors and the Jury.