MARK PATTERSON: Welcome to the first session this morning,
everyone. I’m Mark Patterson. I teach here at Fordham, and I’m the
moderator of this session.
We are honored to have Commissioner Joaquín Almunia here this
morning to speak and very pleased, of course, to have Jean-François Bellis
and Damien Geradin to comment on the commissioner’s speech.
Our plan is for the commissioner to speak first, then we’ll have some
time for audience questions, and then, after that, the commentators will
respond. The commissioner then can respond to their comments. Then I
hope we’ll have further time for audience questions.
Commissioner Almunia.
JOAQUÍN ALMUNIA: Thank you very much. Good morning to
everybody.
Indeed, it’s my first presence here in the Fordham Competition
Conference. Thank you to Mr. Patterson for giving me the floor.
I look forward to enjoying the discussion this morning and to come
back in the next years to continue this dialogue on competition issues with
lawyers, with experts, with academics, with practitioners on both sides of
the Atlantic.
[For Commissioner Almunia’s speech, see Chapter 12]
MARK PATTERSON: Thank you, Commissioner Almunia.
I realize that I followed the Fordham tradition of providing an
exceedingly brief introduction. Of course, the Commissioner doesn’t need
any introduction to most of us here. But normally I’m teaching my
antitrust class at this time, and my students have come here instead of
coming to class, so I should provide some information to them.
I guess I will just say that in the U.S., we have an assistant attorney
general for antitrust and five FTC commissioners, and in the EU there is
Commissioner Almunia, who does the work of six U.S. enforcers.
