Is there a conflict of goals between law and economics in the European competition law?

Rather cynical opinion (which might therefore be quite close to the truth) on the inertia of old theories was expressed by J. M. Keynes in his book on the general theory of employment, interest, and mo­ney in 1963. He said that the ideas of the economists and political philosophers are stronger than is usual­ly supposed. Practitioners who are usually considered to be immune towards any intellectual infiuence are in fact often slaves of dead economists. Powerful men that "hear voices" in fact, according to Keynes, distil the lunacy uttered a few years ago by some academic scribblers. He also waspishly remarked that in the area of economic and political philosophy it is not probable that there are many people older than twenty-five or thirty that would follow new theories, so that the thoughts of officers, politicians, or even propagandists applied in topical situations are probably not much newer. However, he did not consider the interests to be the most dangerous factor, but the permeation of ideas, so he (remark by JB) did not rely much on the psychologically and sociologically conditioned inertia of interest. Without the elegance of Keynes, it may even be suggested that the ideas cannot be genetically separated from the interests.