Comparison of EC and Vietnamese Competition Laws: Anti-competitive Agreements

Abstract: The EC Competition Law has always played an important part in Community Law. Paul Craig and Gráinne de Búrca, EU Law Text, Cases, and Materials, 3rd edition 2003, page 936 This law, with its two fundamental provisions known as Articles 81 and 82 governing anti-competitive behaviours, has made great contribution to the achievement of one of the objectives laid down in the EC Treaty: ensuring that ''competition in the internal market is not distorted''. Among them, Article 81 EC is the principal legal tool for the control of anti-competitive agreements. It prohibits collusions between undertakings which may affect trade between Member States and which have the object or effect of restricting or distorting competition within the common market. Under this Article, Community Courts have developed many fundamental concepts and rulings as significant guidelines for national courts to settle cases related to anti-competitive agreements. These cover basic but important definitions of agreement, undertaking, restriction or distortion of competition, the principle of ''de minimis'', etc., in order for Article 81 to catch, exclude or exempt collusions deemed to be anti-competitive. To support that role of Article 81, came out EC legislations such as Vertical Block Exemption Regulation, Horizontal Block Exemption Regulations covering agreements on specialization, research and development, and technology transfer, as well as Merger Regulation governing mergers including joint ventures. These regulations lay down conditions for agreements to be covered and exempted thereby, otherwise to fall outside their scope of application. Agreements escaping from the scope of those regulations are also assessed under Article 81. The assessment will be carried out to the extent whether the agreements fall outside, are prohibited or individually exempted by this article. In Vietnam, the competition law has been recently promulgated and will become into force on 1 July 2005. This law also sets rules governing anti-competitive behaviours, particularly including: agreements in restraint of competition (anti-competitive agreements), abuse of dominant position, and economic concentration (mergers). In that, provisions catching anti-competitive agreements are laid down in Section 1, Chapter II of the law. However, joint ventures, which are deemed in certain cases as collaborative agreements, are governed by the provisions on economic concentration specified in Section 3 of the same Chapter. In general, the VN Competition Law provides for issues which are also seen in the EC Competition Law such as: prohibition, non-prohibition, and exemption. Nevertheless, since it is a new law, inevitably it remains certain problems that this law has to deal with. Some of concepts and provisions set in the law are still vague or insufficient, so this will cause difficulty for the enforcement of the law afterwards. Therefore, this thesis on comparison of the EC and Vietnamese Competition Laws will help to clarify the foregoing concepts as well as the law's scope of application and exemption for anti-competitive agreements.