Some commentators predicted that the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on competition
regulation would be less dramatic than in other regulatory fields. The powers granted to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and sectoral regulators in the Competition Act 1998, so the argument went, substantially mirror those of the European
Commission.
Convention rights, they argued, have long been a prominent feature of EU anti-trust case law, flowing in through the fundamental rights recognised by the European Court of Justice and Court of First Instance (CFI), and these Courts have largely settled all the major issues.
