공정거래법상 동의명령제 도입방안 연구

• 영문명: Introducing Consent Order into the Korea Anti-Monopoly and Fair Trade Act
• 발행기관: 한국사법학회(구 한국비교사법학회)
• 저자명: 김두진(Doo-Jin Kim)
• 간행물 정보: 『비교사법』比較私法 제16권 제4호, 311~370쪽, 전체 60쪽
• 주제분류: 법학 > 법학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2009.12.30

영문 초록

The KOREA-US Free Trade Agreement (hereinafter “KORUS FTA”) was signed on 4 April 2007 between trade negotiating representatives, and is awaiting respective legislator’s recognition. The KORUS FTA Chapter Sixteen (so-called Competition Chapter) is composed of 9 articles. Among them, the article 16.1(5) declares “Each Party shall provide its authorities responsible for the enforcement of its national competition laws with the authority to resolve an administrative or civil enforcement action by mutual agreement with the subject of such an enforcement action. A Party may provide for such agreement to be subject to judicial approval.” This mutual agreement makes reference to the consent order. The antitrust consent orders are kind of the law enforcement measures and very flexible legal device through the negotiation between the antitrust authority and offending enterprises. In the USA, the majority of antitrust cases were settled by consent orders. Under the current Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act (hereinafter “Fair Trade Act”) in Korea, there are only unilateral corrective measures, including cease and desist order and surcharge order. In this study, I researched the FTC’s consent order and the DOJ’s consent decree procedure and several cases which were settled by negotiation through prescribed consent order scheme in the USA. And the commitment decision procedure in the EU, the Verpflichtungszusagen procedure in the Germany, and the consent adjudication procedure in the Japan were considered, too. This article affirms the necessity of the introducing consent order into our current scheme and seeks to find the proper legislation method of it. To avoid the abuse of power by the Korea Fair Trade Commission (hereinafter “KFTC”), I suggest some recommendations for legislature as follows: Firstly, The exclusion of all cartels from consent order's scope is not appropriate. At least, the consent order should apply to the types of cartels that should be treated under the rule of reason. However where the degree of violations is so obvious and considerable, it should be excluded and to be treated regularly. Secondly, Accepting public comments and conferences with relevant authorities are necessary before entering into consent orders. Thirdly, the judicial review of public interest is unnecessary to the consent order by the KFTC, which is not an independent regulatory body as the FTC but has different feature from the ordinary government ministries, being a quasi-judiciary and quasi-legislative body. The great weight should be put on the independence and expertise of the KFTC. Fourthly, all main opinions and final decisions will be in principle made public via the internet home page in order to accept the public comment. Lastly and not the least, Where the facts which the consent order is based on are false, misrepresented or manipulated, the consent orders should be cancelled through litigations. The reopening should be available for the competition authority and the defendant enterprises to modify the consent orders where necessitated by changed conditions of law or fact, or as required in the public interest.

목차

Ⅰ. 머리말

Ⅱ. 미국의 동의명령제

Ⅲ. 미국 동의명령의 사례

Ⅳ. 주요외국의 유사제도

Ⅴ. 타 법리와의 정합성 검토

Ⅵ. 공정거래법상 동의명령제 도입방안

Ⅶ. 맺음말

키워드

동의명령 동의판결 공정거래법 경쟁법 공정거래위원회 Consent Order Consent Decree the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act Competition Law Korea Fair Trade Commission