This new single volume work adds to an already burgeoning literature available to the practitioner to assist in unraveling the complexities of EEC Competition law. Already published in 1991 have been the supplement to Bellamy & Child’s Common Market Competition Law (3rd edn., 1987) and Butterworths’ three-volume loose leaf Competition Law Encyclopaedia edited by Peter Freeman and Richard Whish. Add to those the other standard texts, Van Bael and Beilis’ Competition Law of the EEC (2nd edn., 1990) and Nicholas Green’s Commercial Agreements and Competition Law (1986), and one has to ask whether there is room for this publication on the busy practitioner’s bookshelf or on the overworked student’s reading list.

The book is divided into two main sections. The first, roughly two-thirds of the total length, comprises nine chapters of commentary and analysis; the second is a collection of relevant Treaty and other legislative provisions, set out in 46 appendices. There is also an index and tables of Court of Justice, Court of First Instance and Commission decisions. Two serious drawbacks have to be noted here. Unfortunately, the case tables do not cross refer to the text, so it is not easy to see where the discussion of a case is set out. Moreover, there are no tables of legislation. These omissions decrease its ease of use for practitioners. Also, a drawback from an academic standpoint is the lack of a bibliography, a failing it shares with a number of its competitors. It is sad that the authors have not been well-served by their publisher in these technical aspects since in other matters of presentation this volume meets expectations as to quality of binding, paper and ability to lie flat on one’s desk.

The content of the text is generally very good, as one would expect of such eminently qualified authors. Both Dr Ritter and Mr Rawlinson have served with the Commission in Directorate General IV, and Mr Braun has similar experience with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division before moving into private practice.

Despite the length of the book, they have avoided prolixity, though occasionally this evident desire to be germane and to the point has left the discussion somewhat too short, especially in the introduction. For example, the discussion of extraterritoriality and the effect of the Wood Pulp decision (Ahlströhm Osakeyhtiö v. Commission [1988] ECR 5193) at pp. 27–30 fails to indulge in any real analysis of the consequences for cartels operated by non-EC entities. The authors content themselves merely with reproducing parts of the relevant paragraphs of the court’s judgment and leaving it at that. While some might think that