In the field of competition law, the rules concerning the prohibitions against the restrictive practices engaged by two or several undertakings and the abusive practices adopted by one or several undertakings holding a dominant position on the relevant market or on an adjacent one, allow the parallel application of the Articles 101 TFEU and 102 TFEU with the national corresponding provisions. Recently the OFT, the British Competition Authority has introduced new rules on penalties meant to preserve the respect for the right of defence of the undertakings, by avoiding the double jeopardy. You can find these new rules attached below.
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/ca98_guidelines/oft423.pdf
The Office of Fair Trading has the power to apply and enforce Arts 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TEFU) as well as applying and enforcing Chap I & II prohibitions of The Competition Act, 1998 (the CA98). The rationale behind the application of stricter penalties is to deter the undertakings from anti-competitive practices and at the same time ensure that penalties are proportionate according to the gravity of abusive practices in question.The stance is similar to the one adopted by European Commission and other European competition authorities. Besides, evidence of appropriate compliance before and after an infringement could warrant reduction in penalty, depending on the gravity of the matter in hand.
In this case, I think that I was not clear enough when I have formulated the question. I don't mean in general, why sanctions are necessary and so on. What I mean is the rationale, i.e. the interest of a national state to impose more drastic penalties, than the ones resulting by the simple application of the EU law.
In the case of parallel application of EU and national competition law on the same infringement, the national competition law can impose criminal penalties on the manager or even another person who has played a determinative role in a cartel. I need a bit of new insight on this issue of parallel application and stricter penalties at the national level. In the end the EU competition law must the applied uniformly across the EU and an eventual coordination of the penalties must be considered,
Hi, this is my suggestion, based in general harmonization and not only competition law. It is posible to observe how the difficulty to enact certain EU legislation (because of the complex legislative procedures) has as one of its consequences that EU hard law can be rather "light" in some issues. IT is difficult for all MS to agree in hard-hard- solutions to many issues (consumer protection, for instance). Further, general penal-criminal law is not a EU competence, bur a MS competence. In competition law the EU Commission has long been empowered to impose administrative law sanctions, but, criminal law is a diferent matter.... EF Perez Carrillo
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