Relevant legislation and statutory standards

The first Brazilian law specifically dealing with competition issues was Law 4137 of 10 September 1962, containing general rules on abuse of economic power, with broad and generic provisions aimed at controlling acts and contracts that could harm competition on the Brazilian market. This law created the Administrative Council for Economic Defence (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica – CADE), the Brazilian authority charged with enforcing the competition law. Other laws and decrees of lesser importance were subsequently issued, also dealing with this matter.

However, as the national economy was strongly closed, suffering a rigid control of prices set by the Federal Government, the enforcement of these legal provisions was minimal and the competition culture almost null. On a parallel basis, and also as a result of the legal environment, the local business community was not familiar with competition rules, mainly due to the country’s political and economic history where governmental control over most economic sectors and industries had been the ground rule for decades.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the current Brazilian competition law was enacted, in a moment when the country was undergoing a signiicant number of privatisations, the outset of currency stabilisation, and the gradual opening of the national economy.