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State Aid policy has been an integral part of competition policy and the European Commission is responsible for controlling aid, which distorts competition in the internal market to be granted by Member States. State Aid is usually defined as advantages given by the State to undertakings in the form of financial contributions, support, or other forms of special treatment. This thesis will examine state aid policy and regulation in the European Union. The research aims at critically analysing the implementation of the rules that compose the European state aid framework and conclude on whether the system for the control of state aid is set in an effective way to achieve the objectives of protecting competition and therefore the internal market by limiting aid levels and streaming aid towards more beneficial aid. This research is important because it can reveal the particular benefits and problems caused by state aid and help by making recommendations for the future application of the rules.

Le résumé en français n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur. / Le résumé en anglais n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur.

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In this dissertation the opening up to competition of the ferry route between the cities Elsinore in Denmark and Helsingborg in Sweden is analysed. The Danish government was forced by a decision adopted by the Competition Directorate (DG IV) in the European Commission to open up this ferry route for ferry operators other than the state owned Danish operator, Danish Rail. Accordingly, the main case analysed in this dissertation illustrates the relationship between the competition authorities in the European Union (EU), empowered with supranational legislative powers through article 90 in the Treaty, and the member states. In the literature, DG IV, the service within the Commission mainly responsible for competition policy, is often described as an autonomous body. The main aim of this dissertation is to assess the autonomy of DG IV in its enforcement and implementation of EU competition policy; and, as the presentation of the main case above indicates, this question is discussed in the context of the introduction of EU competition policy into the domain of public sector monopolies. Two main broad approaches are adopted in analysing this area. First, a systems approach is set out, in which the EU competition policy-making regime is analysed by focusing on its development, legal foundation, and practical formulation in general and in relation to public sector monopolies. The aim here is primarily to reveal the nitty gritty of this regime, which till now has been only fragmentally described in the literature, and to ease the modelling of the main case study undertaken in this dissertation. The Elsinore case is then analysed by adopting three well known perspectives for analysing EU decision-making: an interest group approach; an interorganisational approach; and finally, an institutional approach. The analysis's main observation is that an institutional approach to EU decisionmaking seems to provide us with a more thorough understanding of the processes focused on here than the two other approaches, and that this, at least, should lead us to rephrase the notion of an autonomous DG IV in this area.

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Telecoms industry is a highly specialised industry and there is a general consensus that it requires a specially designed regulatory system. Besides the many technology-oriented regulations, this regulatory system not only integrates many economic theories and concepts taken from competition law, but also features several measures designed ad hoc to deal with the character of the industry, such as a natural monopoly, bottlenecks and a public service. A major category of these regulatory measures is forced access mechanisms. "Forced access" in this thesis refers to the forcing open of certain property – mostly telecoms networks and relevant facilities – to be accessed by others, especially other competitors in the market. While these mechanisms do indeed promote competition in the telecoms market and benefit the public, they also limit the fundamental rights of telecoms companies – mostly incumbents – as legal persons, especially concerning their property rights and freedom to conduct a business, and it does not need emphasising further that the protection of fundamental rights is a general principle in the European Union and a constitutional value in modern democratic states. This thesis aims to take three distinct telecoms forced access mechanisms (interconnection, local loop unbundling and separation), with different regulatory intensities, as examples to discuss the possible fundamental rights derogation issues of two targeted jurisdictions – the European Union and Taiwan. There are some substantial reasons for this comparative study. On the one hand, many of the regulatory concepts of the telecoms regulatory framework in the European Union, together with those in the United States, have been adopted by Taiwan; on the other hand, the protection of fundamental rights in the European Union is inspired by the constitutional traditions common to Member States, and the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) plays an important role, while the Taiwanese Constitution and the constitutionality reviews system derive from Germany (continental law) and the United States (common law). The reasoning of Taiwanese constitutional review does not therefore just reflect the fundamental rights protection system but also introduces the constitutionality review system of the United States as a reference. This thesis starts with an introduction to telecoms forced access mechanisms in the European Union and Taiwan, with a special focus on three selected forced access mechanisms. Then, fundamental rights protection system under the two jurisdictions will be discussed, followed by an in-depth discussion of the concepts of property rights and freedom to conduct a business. This thesis goes on to analyse how to appraise the three telecoms forced access mechanisms in relation to the fundamental rights protection system and to discuss the reasonableness of such an analysis. The final part of the thesis will, by reviewing the legal frameworks of the two jurisdictions, offer answers to the questions raised in the analysis.