Antitrust Prosecutions by Foreign Governments

Abstract

The Sherman Act was 110 years old in the year 2000. Although not quite the oldest national antitrust law in the world, the United States has the richest body of legal decisions of any jurisdiction in the world.¹ One of the greatest movements in international law is the widespread adoption of competition laws outside of North America since the end of World War II. Some of these laws were instituted by countries that were under Allied occupation; Germany and Japan are examples. It was Germany that pressed hard to have competition laws included in the 1958 Treaty of Rome that established the then six-nation European Economic Community. The competition laws of the European Union (EU) are enforced for cross-national trade within the EU by Competition Directorate of the European Commission in Brussels. EU member states have also adopted national competition laws that apply to intra-national commerce. Indeed, all recent entrants and many aspiring entrants to the EU such as Poland and Hungary have been required to form effective national antitrust agencies as a condition of membership in the EU. Mexico formed its competition agency upon joining the North American Free Trade Agreement area. Many other countries (e.g., South Korea, Russia, Chile, and Argentina) adopted competition laws as part of a package of institutional innovations that replaced centralized economic planning or enhanced the development of democratic institutions to serve civil society.