AAT has learned that the fledgling Moroccan antitrust regime, which has never quite come off the ground, is now being supplemented in a sector-specific regulation, namely the recently gazetted Droit [Law] no. 121.12.

The new law supplements the competition guidance specifically for telecommunications carriers, including high-speed internet and fibre-optic cable service providers, without repealing the main piece of antitrust legislation (Law no. 104.12 on the Freedom of Prices and Competition), whose key regulatory body — the Competition Council (Conseil de la Concurrence) — only recently became active in December 2018.  Law 121.12 now confers full investigative authority to the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT), which it enables to review complaints of anti-competitive behaviour, roaming agreements between competitors, and the like.

Andreas Stargard, a competition practitioner with Primerio, notes that “the law is primarily focussed on conduct issues and does not cater for any transactional / merger regulation, which remains the province of Law 104.12 and its crucial (and much debated) ‘40% domestic market share’ hurdle for notifications in the Kingdom.”  Stargard notes that the Competition Council’s web site is still — despite the agency’s recent personnel appointments — merely an “empty store-front of a site, without any substantive content.”

The new telecom-specific regulation is likely to have an impact on, and was influenced by, the limited state of play in the sector, which has been dominated for decades by state monopoly Maroc Telecom, whose would-be competitors such as Orange and Inwi have recently filed complaints against the dominant firm, mostly for refusals to deal, being denied access to indispensable networks, roaming agreements, and the like.

Says Stargard: “The new law will take such disputes out of the lengthy judicial process in court and allow the ANRT to investigate and render decisions on its own, including the power to fine up to 5% of a company’s turnover.”

We will update AAT once further details become available.