Regulating International Competition Issues by Regional Trade Agreements: A Stepping Stone Towards a Plurilateral Trade Agreement?

For a long time, there have been attempts to introduce rules on international competition law in the multilateral trade system. However, in 2003, these attempts were stalled although the Doha declaration of 2001 had been favourable towards these attempts. It has become evident that there is a large disagreement as to the definition of international competition law and its actual function. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are assuming an important subsidiary role in order to make up for the deficiencies of the multilateral trade system and they provide continuous impulses for the multilateral system to improve. In this contribution, it shall be examined up to what extent this holds true for the provisions on competition. More and more RTAs now contain rules on this subject. It shall be shown that these rules are not suited for a direct transfer to the multilateral level. Nonetheless, the regional level offers an important field for further research on the role competition law assumes in worldwide liberalisation attempts. These insights are highly important for any further endeavour to create a multilateral framework of rules in this field.