There have been contrastive views on the enforcement of the Antimonopoly Act (AMA) of Japan between domestic and foreign parties concerned. In Japan, business circles frequently complain that the AMA enforcement has been too stringent for them to improve international competitiveness. On the other hand, from abroad the JFTC has long been seen as a “watchdog trained not to bite,” and the US government frequently alleges that, because of lax enforcement of the AMA, cartels and exclusionary practices are prevalent in Japanese markets. The author explains some causes of such perception gap between home and abroad on the JFTC’s enforcement activities and makes some proposals to narrow the gap. He believes that, although antitrust is one of the best examples of legal transplants and convergence, procedures have deep roots in respective legal soils and culture, and develop gradually.
Competition policy and the WTO share many common objectives: promotion of an open market, provision of fair and equal business opportunities to every participant in the market, transparency and fairness in regulatory process, promotion of efficiency and maximization of consumer welfare. This paper introduces the provisions in WTO agreements closely related to competition policy, the basic principles of the WTO, and case law in the WTO dispute settlement procedures which have some bearings on competition policy. Through the comparison of the different standpoints between the EU and the US on the establishment of an international antimonopoly legal system and summarization of competition policy in the Declaration adopted by the Doha Ministerial Conference and the activities and achievement of WTO in the field of trade and competition, the author puts forward options for competition policy in the WTO. One such option is to introduce an informal and non binding agreement on a multilateral basis into the WTO system.
