NCA independence in the context of EU Regulation 1/2003: time to take incongruent accountability realities (more) seriously?

This paper argues that the Commission’s reform suggestions aimed at streamlining NCAs into
independent administrative agencies appear to neglect this variety of accountability
mechanisms underlying current NCA institutional organisation and functioning. Given that
those mechanisms each harbour incongruent expectations regarding the organisation and
functioning of independent NCAs, failure to acknowledge such incongruence may in practice
lead to less effective competition law enforcement. The purpose of this paper is therefore to
uncover the different NCA independence perspectives underlying those accountability
mechanisms and to look for legally sound ways to make them converge when designing or
upgrading NCA independence in the context of the Regulation 1/2003 reform.