New developments in portuguese competition law : the competition authority in action

• Autor(a) principal: Soares, António Goucha
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/27410
• topic: Cartels; Competition Law; Mergers; National Competition Authorities; Substantial Lessening of Competition; Vertical Agreements; Portugal

Competition is a recent branch of law in the Portuguese legal order. It was only with the accession to the European Communities that a competition law was adopted. Indeed, the very idea of competition was a strange concept in a country that was used to being ruled by a corporative system and where the state had always played an important role in the economy. In this framework, it proved difficult to satisfactorily implement competition law in the first decades. The deep-seated changes in the Portuguese economy in the last 20 years and the decentralisation in the implementation of EC competition rules promoted by EC Regulation 1/2003 created the conditions for an improvement of the competition legal framework. Hence, there was a legislative reform in 2003 that led to the adoption of a new competition law and to the creation of an independent competition agency. This article aims to give a brief overview of the 2003 competition law reform. Then it will focus on the Competition Authority action, mentioning the main decisions concerning the enforcement of competition law, in particular, in the field of cartels and merger control. The telecommunications decision, which is the most complex and controversial merger case decided by the Competition Authority, will deserve a final reference.