Bringing Latin American Judges Up To Speed on Evolving Competition Law

Bringing Latin American Judges Up To Speed on Evolving Competition Law – Alain De Remes (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo) & Rodrigo Ríos (CRCAL)

From March 10 to 12, 2014 the Third Seminar for Latin American Judges on Competition was held in Panama City. This event was financed by the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Inter-American Development Bank, and organized by the Regional Competition Center for Latin America (CRCAL for its acronym in Spanish) in association with the Mexican Center of Investigation for Development (CIDAC for its acronym in Spanish). During three days, twenty-four judges from 12 Latin American countries attended the seminar.

This event is the third of its kind after the success of the first seminar held in Mexico in March 2013 and the second, which took place on July 2013 in Washington, D.C. It is worth noting that with these three seminars more than 40 judges from 12 Latin American countries have been trained on how to use competition principles. Moreover, the funding provided by the UK for this event ratifies that jurisdictions that are more qualified in the enforcement of antitrust laws consider highly relevant to convey their knowledge to countries with a much younger experience in competition regulation.

Latin America has experienced a rapid evolution of its antitrust laws and institutions in charge of safeguarding competition in their economies. Countries in the region, which were once characteri