Competition Law in the Age of Sustainability: Regulatory Challenges and Strategic Responses

The increasing emphasis on sustainability has intensified tensions with competition law, particularly when cooperative initiatives create risks for market competition or consumer welfare. The main challenge is to identify regulatory strategies that balance sustainability objectives with competitive market principles. This requires a systematic assessment of both sustainability benefits and competition related risks. Existing studies largely rely on legal discussions or case-based evaluations and provide limited quantitative guidance for prioritizing regulatory approaches. This study addresses this gap by proposing a structured decision-making framework to reduce conflicts between sustainability goals and competition law. A hybrid model is developed by integrating spherical fuzzy sets with the LOPCOW method, a distance-based experts’ weighting approach, and the AROMAN technique. The model effectively captures uncertainty and improves the robustness of strategy evaluation. The results show that market foreclosure risk and short-term price effects are the most influential criteria, while sustainability safe harbour frameworks and ex ante regulatory approval mechanisms are the most suitable regulatory strategies. The study contributes to the literature by offering a transparent and replicable evaluation tool and suggests regulatory approaches that emphasize legal certainty, proportionality, and preventive regulation to support sustainabilityoriented cooperation without weakening competition.