Competition law at VU Amsterdam

Competition law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is taught inside the LLM in International Technology Law. You take competition law courses, write your thesis with a member of the competition group, and graduate with a technology law degree. That is a deliberate design, and it is the reason to choose Amsterdam over a faculty that teaches competition law by itself.

Why this is the stronger choice

Competition law has been absorbed into technology regulation. The Digital Markets Act borrows its concepts from abuse of dominance case law and is administered by the same Commission department that enforces Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Data access remedies sit across competition law and the General Data Protection Regulation. Merger review in artificial intelligence markets turns on models, data, and compute rather than on plants and distribution networks. A lawyer who knows Articles 101 and 102 but cannot read the AI Act is now working with half the file.

At VU Amsterdam you take competition law and the Digital Markets Act alongside compulsory courses in Technology Law and in Data, Privacy and Human Rights, and alongside electives on artificial intelligence, blockchain, e-commerce, biotechnology, and space law. You graduate able to read a gatekeeper compliance report, a merger notification, and a data access remedy in the same week. Programmes that teach competition law on its own do not produce that. The rest of this page sets out what surrounds the courses.

What you will not find elsewhere

Competition faculties teach competition law. Here you take it next to courses on outer space technology, weapons, biotechnology, blockchain, e-commerce, and artificial intelligence, each taught by someone who researches that field. The combination lets you specialise in one narrow market and know it better than the generalists do. Merger control in satellite launch services, data access remedies in genomics, cartel detection on DeFi exchanges, procurement and market power in defense supply chains… These are theses almost nobody else in Europe is writing, and the firms and authorities working on those files struggle to find lawyers who have both halves.

The technical training runs alongside the doctrine. Foundations covers machine learning and network analysis as enforcement tools, Legal Methodology covers research design, and ALTI runs seminars and workshops with data scientists. The three PhD candidates funded by the ATLANTIS grant work on computational antitrust and bring that material into teaching from December 2026. Students who arrive with no technical background leave able to read a model and say what it does and does not support, which is the skill competition authorities are now hiring for.

Around this sits the monthly seminar, where authors from Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics, Texas, and the General Court of the European Union present their work over lunch to an audience that includes master’s students. The campus itself is at the southern edge of Amsterdam, ten minutes from the Zuidas law firms and about a kilometre from the Amsterdamse Bos, a thousand hectares of forest, water, and running trails.

What competition law is

Competition law, called antitrust law in the United States, governs how firms behave in markets. Agreements between competitors that fix prices or divide markets are prohibited under Article 101 TFEU. Abuse of a dominant position, such as predatory pricing or refusal to supply an essential input, falls under Article 102. Mergers above certain turnover thresholds must be notified to the European Commission under the EU Merger Regulation, or to a national authority such as the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) under the Dutch Competition Act.

Since 2022 a further layer applies. The Digital Markets Act imposes obligations on large online platforms designated as gatekeepers, without requiring proof of dominance or of anticompetitive effects. The AI Act, the Data Act, and the Digital Services Act each shape market structure.

The programme

The LLM in International Technology Law runs for one year, full time, entirely in English. It starts on 1 September and on 1 February. Compulsory courses are Technology Law, Data, Privacy and Human Rights, Legal Methodology, and the Master’s Thesis. Everything else comes from your elective choices, which is where the competition specialisation is built.

The competition courses

The electives that complement them

Data, Privacy and Human Rights is compulsory, so every graduate leaves with the data protection grounding that competition practice in digital markets assumes. Beyond that, the technology law electives include E-Commerce Law, robots and artificial intelligence, blockchain and disruptive technology, biotechnology and law, Law and Governance of Outer Space Technologies, and International Weapons Law.

The people

A monthly seminar

ALTI runs a competition and technology seminar every month on campus, and master’s students attend at no cost. You put your question directly to the author whose article you were assigned that week.

Speakers over the past year include Herbert Hovenkamp (University of Pennsylvania), Pablo Ibáñez Colomo (London School of Economics), Jonathan Barnett (University of Southern California), Richard Markovits (University of Texas), Frédéric Jenny (ESSEC and former Vice President of the French Competition Authority), Pēteris Zilgalvis (Judge at the General Court of the European Union), Geoffrey Manne (International Center for Law & Economics), Catalina Goanta (Utrecht University), and Jason Potts (RMIT).

The full calendar is at alti.amsterdam/events/list.

Prizes, forums, and conferences

The Best Master’s Thesis Award in European Competition Law and Competitiveness is organised by us, together with the International Center for Law & Economics.

The Competition Law Doctoral Forum, founded in 2025 by Thibault Schrepel and Georgiana Mirza, gathers PhD candidates working on competition law in the Netherlands each year.

ALTI co-hosts an annual antitrust conference with the International Center for Law & Economics and IE Law School Madrid. The 2026 edition in Rome brought together Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit, Randal Picker and Todd Henderson of the University of Chicago, Douglas Melamed of Stanford, Herbert Hovenkamp, and the president of the Brazilian competition authority.

Where graduates go

Graduates work at leading institutions across the world, including major international law firms, competition authorities, and the European Commission. Others continue into doctoral research in the field.

Why the Netherlands

• Amsterdam is the centre of European cartel damages litigation. Claims arising from cartels in trucks, air cargo, elevators, and interest rate benchmarks have been brought before the Amsterdam District Court, often through claim foundations created under Dutch law. Collective redress rules, a specialised judiciary, and English-language proceedings before the Netherlands Commercial Court have made the country a default venue.
• Brussels is one hour and fifty minutes from Amsterdam Zuid by direct train, which puts DG Competition and the Brussels competition bar within reach for a day.
• The ACM, in The Hague, moved early on digital markets and on sustainability agreements between firms. Its guidelines on the second question were taken up as a reference point at EU level.
• The Zuidas business district, a ten minute walk from campus, hosts the Amsterdam offices of the firms that handle European merger filings and cartel defence.

Talk to us before you apply

Questions students ask