On 5 October 2017 Martijn van de Hel will be one of the speakers at the 15th Annual Conference on Developments in Competition Law. The conference is an initiative of Stichting Ontwikkelingen Mededingingsrecht and is now the principal competition law conference in the Netherlands.
Martijn will be a member of a panel that will address the question to what extent leniency schemes of competition authorities offer adequate legal safeguards. Opinions vary on the manner in which competition authorities handle evidence provided by leniency applicants. The European Commission and ACM believe that their gathering of evidence withstands the test of criticism. Lawyers have noted that the right of defence is being jeopardised because competition authorities take an insufficiently critical attitude towards leniency applicants and accused companies have no possibility of examining witnesses of leniency applicants. Does this present a problem? And, if so, can the objections be accommodated by changing the statutory and other procedures without the effectiveness of leniency schemes being jeopardised? The entire programme can be found here.
