Question time: Finding remedies

Deo Debattista, Parliamentary Secretary for Consumer Protection

From the inception of the Competition Act in 1995, the legislative framework has always allowed for the imposition of fines for infringements of the Competition Act either by the Court of Magistrates, or more recently in 2011, by the Director General of the Office for Competition himself. It was only in 2013 that the Director General imposed fines for an alleged infringement of the competition rules, which measure was then challenged before the Maltese courts.

Does this mean that because no fine had ever been imposed during the 18 years from the setting up of an Office for Competition no enforcement was taking place? On the contrary, the Office for Competition throughout the years has intervened successfully in detecting and investigating breaches of the Competition Act and also defended its decisions and reports before the then Commission Fair Trading and today before the Competition and Consumer Appeals Tribunal with a high degree of success.

The Office for Competition has been using other powers present in the Competition Act such as the imposition of interim measures or through the application of the commitments...