• A legal provision can only be properly understood once there is an understanding of the circumstances of its adoption, since only that can explain why the provision was needed in the first instance. This paper has endeavoured to do this with Article 82EC, examining the travaux préparatoires, or preparatory documents, leading to the final Article 82EC, which have so far been largely ignored. • Traditional interpretation has suggested that the foundation for Article 82EC was strongly influenced by ordoliberalism. This paper shows that 82EC was not envisaged as an ordoliberal proposition at its inception and seeks to fill a gap in the study of antitrust law by examining the original intentions of the drafters. It shows that the predominant issue was increasing efficiency and “increasing the size of the pie” rather than preventing an accumulation of power per se. • Ordoliberalism has its origins in German competition policy of the 1930s and 1940s and involved the use of law to protect market processes from distortion, either by the public power of the state or the private power of large firms. The goal of competition policy for ordoliberals was the protection of individual economic freedom and the restraint of undue economic power. Efficiency was an outcome of the realisation of individual freedom of action in a market system. It also meant that monopolies should
