A Practitioner’s Critique : the One-Stop Shop Regime of the COMESA Competition Commission

Abstract

The ‘Competition Commission’ for the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’ has been established as the competition law enforcer of the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’, an international region of 21 African member states. The ‘Competition Commission’ is a regional body said to enjoy international legal personality. This regional body considers itself to be a ‘one-stop shop’ within the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’ and hence seeks to exercise its jurisdiction to the exclusion of that of ‘national competition authorities’ within the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’. However, in practice this ‘one-stop shop’ persona has not been accepted by all member states of the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’ – leading to jurisdictional confusion, legal uncertainty and enforcement fragmentation. This paper is a consideration of whether the ‘Competition Commission’ has the requisite consent from member states of the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’ to operate as a ‘one-stop shop’, and, if so, the paper considers what obstacles stand in the way of the effective application of the said ‘one-stop shop’ jurisdiction within the ‘Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’.