Carla Farinhas was the guest speaker of the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC) for the June Open Seminars session, which took place on June 27 in Lisbon.

The presentation by Carla Farinhas, who was référendaire to the Judge-Rapporteur of the AC-Treuhand case, José Luís da Cruz Vilaça, dwelled on the topic ‘The AC-Treuhand Judgment - Implications for Competition Policy’, one of the main rulings in this field.

In that ruling, the Court of Justice made it clear for the first time that the involvement of a consultancy firm in setting up and supporting the operation of a cartel - one of the most serious infringements of the rules on competition - was itself a sanctionable infringement, although the services provided by the cartel facilitator were not in the same market in which the direct cartel participants operated.

The Portuguese Competition Authority organizes the Open Seminars in Lisbon every month, in which it seeks to promote the discussion of current competition issues, based on presentations by guest speakers of unquestionable merit. In May, the guest speaker was Professor Ariel Ezrachi of Oxford.