The Study On Leniency Policy In Antitrust Law

Regulation of monopoly agreements is an important part of modern anti-monopoly law entity system. The monopoly agreement is characterized not only by written or oral agreement, but also by tacit understanding each other. An important feature of monopoly agreements is that it is difficult to be found and get the evidence. At the same time, in order to avoid the severe punishments, the participants of monopoly agreements conclude agreements in the form of more secretive, and adopt diversified ways to avoid the investigation, which makes the investigation of monopoly agreements more difficult. In addition, under the impetus of the world trend of economic globalization, today’s monopoly agreements shows the characteristics of transnational, which increases the difficulty of cracking down on. monopoly agreements. The forgiveness system,appeared in the United States,is proved to be an important measures of effectively disintegrating monopoly alliance, and obtaining evidence of the monopoly agreements. The forgiveness system becomes the important topic of various countries’ antitrust institution.Forgiveness system’s utility is emerging in practice, so many countries introduce it for reference. Started on August 1, 2008, the “Anti-monopoly law” in our country also introduces the system. The second paragraph of article 46 of the law is about the regulation of antitrust forgiveness system in our country, namely, if the operator actively reports relevant information, provides important evidence, he can be mitigated punishment or be exempted from punishment. But this provision, which is too rough, is a principle of forgiveness system legislation. The specific conditions of forgiveness system are not clear, there is no provisions of forgiveness system program, there is uncertainty of the scope of legal responsibility, the discretion power of the anti-monopoly law enforcement agency is too big and so on, all of this inevitably lead to the unpredictability of forgiveness system and the difficulties of execution. Therefore, it is important to study related issues of antitrust forgiveness system in-depth, improve the system of substantive and procedural rules of antitrust forgiveness, strengthen and clear forgiveness treatment, eliminate the external environment of forgiveness system of execution. Therefore, it is urgent to issue the detailed rules or perform guide of the antitrust forgiveness system.