Guidelines as a Tool to Promote Competition Enforcement in Brazil

Abstract

This chapter presents CADE’s experience with the use of guidelines to promote competition enforcement in Brazil. This instrument enables competition authorities to send clear messages to the private sector and strengthen legal certainty in the application of competition legislation. In recent years, CADE has issued a few new competition guidelines, namely for compliance programmes, leniency agreements, settlement agreements, and gun jumping. In addition, the former Merger Horizontal Guidelines have been replaced, and at least one other guideline is in the pipeline for merger remedies. These guidelines shed light on key aspects of CADE’s understanding of the Brazilian national legislation, concerning both substance and procedure issues. The chapter concludes by stressing that these guidelines are often well perceived by the local competition community, as their draft versions previously gather private inputs through public consultations, reflect the enforcer’s perspective, and enable greater predictability in the application of Brazilian Competition Law.