Research On The System Of Forgiveness In Antitrust Law

The world’s competition authorities share the view that business cartels are harmful to the economy.Cartels may lead to the inefficient use of resources by reducing the cartel members’ output and increasing prices or by encouraging inefficient firms to stay in the market and customers having to pay higher prices because of limited price competition and/or product choice.To eliminate such anti-competitive behavior,antitrust officials created leniency program.Since its introduction in the Anti-Monopoly Law in 2007,the leniency program has played an important role in China.Nevertheless,it is difficult to deny that Chinese leniency program is too inefficient to confront with the high developing domestic and global economy since the prim and rough of leniency policy,so,the Chinese leniency program needs to be modified.Firstly,this article’s analysis below demonstrate that the leniency program conform to the principle of justice and fairness,as well as the principle of good faith and describes the costs and benefits that arise if the antitrust authority implements a leniency program,it turns out that leniency programs could exploit the inherent instability of cartels by creating sufficient apprehension among colluding participants in that any of them could expose the cartel,which turns out to be an effective incentive mechanism;Secondly,this article collects and refines worldwide leniency procedures,such as the common leniency policy,leniency program for individuals and amnesty plus program;thirdly,this article compare US leniency program with EU leniency program,introduces supranational competition organizations’ leniency program such as the ECN and the international trend of leniency program;Thirdly,summarize the drawbacks in Chinese leniency program from this article analyzed above,such as the shortage in procedures and the ambiguity in entity in legislation;the weak punishment and the disordered enforcing authority in law enforcement;the shortage in international cooperation and education about the implement environment.Lastly,this article recommend that we should complete the procedures and the entity of the leniency program,introduce the marker system,allow the oral leniency program,make the leniency program more transparency and certainty;Use stronger penalties and set up a more vigorous enforcement;Enhance international cooperation of the leniency program and rise education and awareness of our leniency program,on the basis of reference of the foreign experience.