It could be argued that 35 years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, European competition policy is on the verge of fulfilling its ultimate goal of creating a competition order and a level playing field between firms across the Community. On this view there remains only the issue of adjusting national and European competition policies so as to make better use of the subsidiarity principle in the relationship between the member states and the Commission. And this latter issue can be perceived as a simple matter of optimizing the administration of competition policy.