경쟁법의 국제규범화를 위한 논의의 역사

Discussion for establishment of international competition law began in the 1940s when the Second World War was nearing to an end. The attempt to set forth regulation of anti-competitive acts in the ITO charter was frustrated as countries such as the U.S. failed to obtain domestic support. Afterwards, the U.S tried to expand extraterritorial application of competition law, the most representative of which was the Alcoa decision of 1945, but such effort provoked backlash from counterpart countries including the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result, the U.S shifted toward entering into bilateral agreements to strengthen cooperation in antitrust enforcement. In 1961, the Competition Committee was set up in the OECD as a venue for discussion of major antitrust issues. Discussion in the OECD Competition Committee led to the efforts to establish best practices, recommendations and other rules that have rather weak binding force, which had continued until now. The UN established the SET, rules and principles governing antitrust issues, in 1980 after negotiation among member countries. At that time, countries like the U.S pushed for passage of legally binding rules, but their attempt was foiled in the face of opposition from developing countries, creating the SET in the form of non-binding self-imposed regulation. In the 1980s, with the launch of the WTO and increased interest in competition law, efforts to establish international completion law became more active. Europe started to work toward creation of legally binding rules in the early 1990s, which developed into the effort to establish antitrust regulation in the WTO system. However, such attempt ended in failure when the discussion within the WTO was officially abandoned in the Cancun Ministerial Meeting in 2003. On the other hand, the U.S focused its effort on bilateral consultation aimed to expand access to markets of other countries, rather than establishment of antitrust regulation in international organizations. The case in point was Structural Impediments Initiatives (SII) the country carried out with Japan. In the 2000s, there has been a heightened call for converging competition policy of different countries especially on merger regulation within the U.S. Moreover; opposing decisions on the GE/Honeywell merger by the U.S and EU further raised a need to create an international consultative body. In response to such calls, the International Competition Network (ICN) was set up in October 2001 with participation from 14 countries including Korea. The ICN has now emerged as a major gathering for international discussion on competition law. Based on such trend, it is expected that discussion for establishment of international competition law will be focused on how currently non-binding international antitrust regulation, in the form of recommendation or best practice, can develop into the system that has stronger binding force. Therefore, it is believed that Korea needs to respond to the current trend in the international antitrust community with systematic strategy and principles.

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