“Iwould like to highlight a significant contradiction in the rulings of the Lisbon Court of Appeal,” stated the president of the Competition Authority (AdC), Nuno Cunha Rodrigues, during a hearing at the Parliamentary Committee on Economy today.
The official noted that while in the so-called ‘banking cartel’ case, the Court of Appeal considered that the statute of limitations “was not suspended by the preliminary ruling request made to the European Court of Justice” and annulled the fines to banks on the grounds that the process had expired, the same court had a different understanding in another case.
“In the case of the CMEC [Contractual Equilibrium Maintenance Costs, in which EDP Produção was sanctioned by the Competition Authority for abuse of dominant position], the same judicial authority concluded the opposite, that the statute of limitations is indeed suspended during the pendency of the preliminary ruling request,” Cunha Rodrigues stated.
In September 2024, the Competition Court upheld fines totaling 225 million euros imposed by the AdC on 11 banks, deciding that it was proven that between 2002 and 2013, there was “collusion” for the exchange of credit information and “alignment of commercial practices” distorting competition.
The banks appealed, and in February, the Lisbon Court of Appeal declared the infraction expired, accounting for the time when matters were under European judicial review.
Both the AdC and the Public Prosecutor’s Office filed appeals to the Constitutional Court to try to halt the expirations, but these were rejected.
In June, the AdC filed a complaint with the Constitutional Judges Conference regarding the Constitutional Court’s decision not to review the appeals, awaiting a response.
Today, at the parliamentary committee, the president of the Competition Authority considered that these contradictory decisions by the Court of Appeal “generate legal uncertainty and weaken the consistency of Competition Law enforcement, especially in complex and economically significant cases.”
However, he added that in the future, this issue “will not occur in new processes” as the amendment made in 2022 to the Competition Law establishes that “the statute of limitations on an infraction procedure is suspended for the duration of any judicial appeal against the Competition Authority’s decision, including possible appeals to the Constitutional Court, without any time limitation.”
Regarding the banking sector, the president of the AdC remarked that the Competition Authority “has been very proactive,” with various recommendations and initiatives concerning bank fees and customer mobility.
