Fundamental Rights Protection for Corporate Entities in the EU

The book focuses on the issue whether fundamental rights protect legal entities, and is so, to what extend. It examines that problem on the selected field of research, which is the Community competition law, in particular the European Commission\'s investigatory powers in proceeding against anti-competitive practices. In such procedures the Commission has very broad and significant powers which overlap with fundamental rights as inspired by the European Convention of Human Rights, in particular inviolability of home, right to silence and prohibition of self-incrimination. §§The author goes through the complex jurisprudence to show that neither the European Court of Justice nor the European Court of Human Right any longer questions that the protection of some fundamental rights also extends to legal entities. However, it is still impossible to indicate precisely what the scope of those rights is. §§Therefore, it is argued that clarification of the scope of protection granted to the legal entities by the fundamental rights is an urgent matter from the perspective of all competition law players, particularly in the light of principles of the rule of law and accountability.