EU Commercial Law

Joint ventures (JVs) are essential to multinational enterprises managing their businesses around the world. Companies form JVs for numerous reasons, such as collaborating on a joint research project or aligning a start-up venture to enter a new market or to develop technologies. Such JVs may encounter potential problems, however, including differences in corporate culture, strategic goals, and violation of competition laws. The impact of competition laws upon JVs is the major concern of this book. It is aimed to provide a theoretical basis for forming JVs and overviews the development of the rules governing JVs under the EC competition law from the very beginning to the present. In particular, it attempts to highlight the differences between the Regulation (EEC) No. 4064/89 and the Council Regulation (EC) No. 1310/97. Finally, several competition issues such as Free Movement of Goods, Regulation 1/2003, and Financial Service Action Plan (FSAP) are also discussed.