Qué es la ley de la competencia

What is competition law?

'Competition Law' applies to companies who offer goods for sale and compete

to get customers to buy their products. Competition Law is designed to prevent

companies from trading unfairly.

Competition Law does two things: creates greater customer choice and

prevents monopolies from forming.

More competition means more choice for the customer. Competition law applies

to anyone who trades, no matter what size the company is.

Competition law, or antitrust law, has three main elements:

a) prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and

competition between business. This includes in particular the repression

of free trade caused by cartels.

b) banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anticompetitive

practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position.

Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price

gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.

c) supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including

some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the

competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to

"remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or

to offer licenses or access to facilities to enable other businesses to

continue competing.

Substance and practice of competition law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Protecting the interests of consumers and ensuring that entrepreneurs have an

opportunity to compete in the market economy are often treated as important

objectives. Competition law is closely connected with law on deregulation of

access to markets, state aids and subsidies, the privatization of state owned

assets and the establishment of independent sector regulators, among other

market-oriented supply-side policies.

The Italian competition Authority: what is it? What does it?

The Italian competition and market authority, also known as the Antitrust

Authority, is an independent authority created in 1990.

The term 'independent authority' refers to any public body which makes its own

decisions based on the law, without the possibility of interference from the

government or other politically representative bodies.

It has competencies in the areas of improper commercial practices and

misleading and comparative advertising and conflicts of interest.

As of 2007, the Antitrust has been in charge of protecting consumers from any

unfair commercial practices among undertakings, as well as from all misleading

advertising. In order to guarantee fair market competition, it also intervenes

against all comparative advertising which may bring discredit on competitor’s

products or cause confusion among consumers

The primary task attributed to the Antitrust Authority is the implementation of

Law no. 287 of 1990, the Italian antitrust law.

Parliament introduced the national antitrust legislation

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