Las medidas cautelares en el derecho de la competencia: desarrollo en Colombia 1992-2022.

Competition Law protects free market economies, guaranteeing free competition. Among the various tools Competition Authorities around the world have, the administrative sanctioning process is one of them. In these processes interim measures can be issued. The purpose of an interim measure is to intervene in a specific market in which anticompetitive behaviors are being held, ensuring the effectiveness of an eventual sanctioning decision. The objective of this article is to define and describe interim measures in Competition Law, reviewing, in first place, the legal regulation in the European Union, Spain, France, and Mexico; secondly, a detailed and complete analysis of the development of interim measures in Colombia will be presented (1992-2022). To accomplish this second goal, a full revision of the legal regime in Colombia will be presented, followed by the analysis of the five cases in which the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce has issued interim measures in administrative competition sanctioning processes. Finally, some normative challenges will be presented, which must be revised and addressed by the Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]