Legislative development

29 March 2007 Bill

On 29 March 2007 Senator Jorge Milton Capitanich submitted to Congress a bill with proposed amendments to the Competition Act 25,156 (“the Act”). The Bill has been subject to criticism, for the following reasons:

1. The Bill provides that economic concentrations affecting the “national interest” in the utilities, defence, energy or mining sectors, or those sectors having “a substantially high impact on employment or investment in accordance with standards set forth by the enforcement authority, with respect to the level of impact in each sector”, may be subject to a second review, not by the competition authorities but by the Ministry of Economy. This new review is to be based on purely political grounds.

2. While on the one hand the Bill provides for the completion of the steps required for the formation of the new competition agency, the TNDC, created by the Act, on the other it appoints the members of the existing agency, the CNDC, as members of the TNDC for the first tenure, while at the same time providing that the two new members who must be appointed to complete the seven-member TNDC will be appointed by the President of Argentina within 30 days from the passing of the law. This procedure would change the rules for the formation of the TNDC as originally provided for in the Act (election through an independent jury in a competitive process).

The text of the Bill almost completely reproduces the text of the bill that a former Minister of Economy of Argentina had introduced on 17 August 2005 (see below).