On Contemplating ASEAN Competition Policy: Competition Law and Removing Entry Barriers for ASEAN Market Integration, Lex Mercatoria Vol.3(1) 2015 (forthcoming)

Abstracts

Market integration necessitates the opening up of the market for potential competitors. This means that there should not be barriers to entry, not only in the level of business practices, but moreover, in the policy level, where regulatory meassures need to allow the free flow of market players to enter and exit the market, or create an entirely new market. Whilst market integration in the regional level like ASEAN requires an adequate competition policy to address this issue, the policy might not always be in conformity with the policy of the individual member states tailored to the particularity of their needs. The policy to protect domestic players, i.e. small players, from head to head competition with foreign and bigger players exemplifies this conundrum. In the next analysis, the question goes further to assess how competition law would play its role in the framework of ASEAN integration in order to reduce or remove entry barriers. A possible regional competition law has become one of the most intensed studies in the region. The question focuses on how such law would be placed in its relation with national competition laws, bearing in mind that not yet all member states have already used competition law as a tool to safeguard fair competition and free market, or further, even the law in different member states might serve different purposes. 

Keywords: competition policy, competition law, ASEAN market integration, entry barriers

Wahyuningtyas, S.Y. (2015). Lex Mercatoria Vol.3(1) 2015 (forthcoming)