[Early Bird] Green Rules, Fragmented Fields: Member-State Approaches to Sustainability in EU Competition Law

Authors

• Niccolò Galli, European University InstituteFollow
• Armando Santoni, Università di MacerataFollow

ORCID

Niccolò Galli – 0000-0003-1292-0296

Armando Santoni – 0000-0002-2265-7076

Keywords

Sustainability, antitrust, ECN, consumer-welfare, horizontal cooperation guidelines, environment

Abstract

This article provides a comparative, normative-evaluative examination of how sustainability is being incorporated into European competition law. Combining doctrinal legal analysis with economic reasoning, it clarifies competing definitions of sustainability, maps the contest between the consumer-welfare paradigm and sustainability proponents, and evaluates the legal and institutional implications of the Commission’s 2023 Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines. Drawing on national initiatives across Member States plus the UK, the study highlights contrasting instruments, from Austria’s statutory environmental exemption to the Dutch soft-law safe harbour and Greece’s experimental sustainability sandbox, and shows how these divergent approaches produce fragmentation and legal uncertainty for cross-border cooperative initiatives. It concludes that competition law cannot substitute for sector-specific sustainability regulation but can materially support the Green Deal if EU and national authorities harmonise standards, specify clear evidentiary criteria for exemptions and enforcement, and deploy pragmatic tools, including coordinated ECN guidance, together with targeted enforcement practices to reconcile sustainability objectives with market predictability.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

The article results from the authors’ joint research efforts. In particular, Armando Santoni took the lead for Section 2 and 3, while Niccolò Galli did so for Sections 4 and 5. Together they wrote the introduction and conclusions.

Funding

This article received no funding.

Declaration of Conflict of Interests

Authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and publication of this article.

Declaration about the scope of AI utilisation

Authors did not use AI in the preparation of this article

Recommended Citation

Galli, N., & Santoni, A. (2026). [Early Bird] Green Rules, Fragmented Fields: Member-State Approaches to Sustainability in EU Competition Law. Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, 19(33). https://doi.org/10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2026.19.33.9

Page Count

35

Received Date

09.12.2025

Accepted Date

01.03.2026

DOI

10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2026.19.33.9

JEL Code

K21, K32, L40, Q01, L41

Publisher

University of Warsaw