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Businessmen are ahead of politicians in meeting the challenge of 1992 and management schools have a pivotal role to play. Many fields of business including electronics, insurance, air transport and telecommunications are impatient to break the administrative shackles which currently circumscribe their activities and which the Single Market will help to remove.

Provides an institutional insight into competition policy making in the European Union (EU). Focuses primarily on the core EU institution, namely the European Commission, and specifically the Directorate General for Competition (DGIV) which has assumed the stature of an autonomous agency and manages the first truly supranational EU policy. As its authority has grown the EU competition rules have impacted on the activities of all businesses operating within the single market. In short, the Commission operates as the world’s leading regional anti‐trust enforcement agency and as such it may serve as the ideal prototype for a larger international accord as pressure mounts for the establishment of some form of global competition rules. Accounts for the origins of policy and the evolution of DGIV, analyses the EU institutional setting, provides an assessment of policy and accentuates the inevitability of competition policy reform in the late 1990s.

Countries have differences in competition policies, which are cause for friction in international trade and investment. This paper discusses those issues and develops a model to try to explain the willingness of countries to participate in a cooperative competition policy. The model suggests that countries which are economically advanced, active in trade, and already involved in trade regimes are most likely to cooperate in competition policy.

States that legislatures act as important debates in the public eye and that few are real bodies for policy making, linking people and the government. Insists, though, that they are, at national and lower level, institutions of importance. Looks at the relationship between the EU and national parliaments. Addresses the above and also the law‐making processes within the EU. Lists four main questions, which are expanded in detail in the article.

In The Times (10th July 1992) the following by line appeared on p1 ‘Body Shop wins unholy row with businesswoman’; announcing that Sir Peter Pain, sitting as a High Court judge, had granted an injunction restraining a Mrs Pauline Rawle, who was described as ‘an evangelical Christian woman’ from using the ‘Body Shop’ name in respect of six franchised shops in Bromley, Maidstone, Canterbury, Romford and Croydon (2 branches). It was alleged that the ‘close relationship’ essential to the franchise contract between Mrs Rawle and the Body Shop ‘had clearly broken down’. Mrs Rawle allegedly told staff to have nothing to do with Body Shop representatives and alleged a conspiracy against her and comparing herself with God and the Body Shop organisation to Satan! Mass dismissals of staff followed and the franchises were temporarily closed and re‐opened with inferior standards. This case is one of the few reported decisions on franchise operation in the UK.

Not trainspotting this time, but library and book‐spotting from a clean and convenient site that offers a tidy set of resources for librarians, teachers and students.

The increasing liberalisation of all forms of trade, including the financial services sector, is encouraging the internationalisation of the European insurance industry, making it more vulnerable to fraud. This paper discusses the current problem with fraud in the sector, and considers the implications of moving into new markets. It then looks at future fraud prevention methods such as screening of applicants and stresses that there is an urgent need for the situation to be reviewed.

No comprehensive national information policy exists in the UK. Although there are many practical reasons for its absence, the lack of political will by government is probably decisive. This paper attempts to examine the political pressures (both domestic and international) for and against a UK national information policy: initially by looking at the major factors which militate against the formulation of a policy (most of these are a result of government philosophy and domestic politics), and then by looking at developments which might bring a policy into existence (most of these relate to political and economic developments in Europe). The number of government departments involved in information matters, their individual and disparate policies, the success of the market‐led information economy, and the difficulty in controlling the multi‐national element of this economy, all stand in the way of the establishment of a national policy. Yet the single European market, European regulations, the need to formulate a European information policy, the historic parallels with other sectors of European policy, each of which have profound economic implication, suggest that the present vacuum might have to be filled.