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As a competition lawyer who has not been involved in the matters mentioned in the article, I can make two comments:

1. The EU and UK competition law rules recognise that the eco-benefits of a given cooperation may outweigh the anti-competitive effects, thus effectively "approving" a restriction of competition in certain circumstances. For example, in one of its guidance documents the European Commission gives the example of an agreement between producers of washing machines who agree no longer to manufacture products which do not meet certain environmental standards. As 90% of the industry sign up to the initiative in the example, prices are likely to go up as a result. However, according to the Commission this is an example of standardisation which is allowed. Linked to this there is the issue of exchange of commercially sensitive information at meetings: there are a number of no-go areas (such as pricing, sales volumes, pipeline products etc), but outside these "red flag" areas the participants can normally have a frank and open discussion.

2. In 2010 the OFT said that it was worried about companies not proceeding with certain forms of cooperation out of fear regarding the competition law consequences of cooperation. Therefore the OFT introduced a "short form opinion" procedure, designed to give parties certainty within a reasonable time period as to the competition law position. Since 2010 the OFT has issued only one such short form opinion (regarding a joint purchasing agreement between P&H and Makro). The article states that Defra "approached" the OFT regarding the satellite TV box initiative in 2009. It appears that that initiative would have been an excellent candidate for an OFT short form opinion. Equally, the discussions on the Courtauld 3 packaging targets could benefit from a short form opinion, in so far as they throw up genuine competition law questions.