Abstract

In periods characterized by important efforts to open markets to competition, many Authors tend to regard the essential facilities doctrine as the only instrument able to ensure the effectiveness of such efforts, by controlling and forbidding potential excluding practices by undertakings that still hold a privileged position on the market mainly because of their ability to control an essential facility. In telecommunications sector particularly, there is a concrete risk that a "populist" approach to teoretical principles behind the doctrine at issue could open the doors to an indiscriminate use of the essential facilities theory even in cases where the control of a facility is no more than a mere competitive advantage. In this article the Author mainly deals with the consequences of such view of the essential facilities theory as regards the effects on incentives to invest in financially important projects.