Tribuna Oberta Vilafranca
The Catalan Anti-Trust Tribunal: activities and prospects
Article
Lluís Franco i Sala
Chair, Catalan Anti-Trust Board
Full Professor of Economic Policy, University of Barcelona
Abstract
In accordance with the 1989 Anti-Trust Law, the Anti-Trust Tribunal and Service in Spain worked on a centralised model. The reasons subsequently leading to a distributed anti-trust model included the need to standardise models in the European Union and the fact that, although the drafting of anti-trust legislation could not be handed over to the regions, its application could. Following Constitutional Court sentence 208/1999, which opened the door to Spain's regional governments who wanted to establish their own anti-trust bodies, the Catalan government's Anti-Trust Department and the Catalan Anti-Trust Tribunal were created in 2002. The two main areas of activity for these Catalan bodies are looking out for behaviour that could impede, falsify or restrict, wholly or in part, competition, and promotion of free competition, or what is known as advocacy of competition. The Tribunal's activities include making proposals for improvements to the legislation, and the production of studies and reports.
Keywords
Published in: October 2008