PRESS RELEASE

PROFESSIONS: THE ANTITRUST AUTHORITY LAUNCHES A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION AGAINST THE MUTUALISTIC UNION OF NOTARIES IN VENETO FOR AN ALLEGED AGREEMENT RESTRICTING COMPETITION

The Union, composed of several professionals from Treviso, regulates the putting in common of a percentage of individual professionals’ proceeds to be divided in equal parts among all. This could lead to a lack of competition among the adhering notaries.

In a meeting on 31^st July 2013, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato resolved to launch a preliminary investigation so as to verify if the forming of the Mutualistic Union among notaries in Veneto can constitute an agreement restricting competition.

According to the Antitrust Authority, the association, composed of several professional notaries belonging to the area of Treviso, can produce restrictions in competition. In fact, the Union’s aim is to put in common a part of the associate notaries’ proceeds to then divide them among the same in equal parts. In this way, individual notaries, regardless of the activity carried out, are guaranteed a monthly minimum income by the association (and therefore, basically by their competitors). This could lead said professionals to be less spurred to search for new clients through competitive conducts such as the improvement of the services provided or the reduction of prices. Therefore, the agreement is likely to advantage, in an anticompetitive manner, both the notaries newly appointed in the area who could count on a guaranteed level of income, and the professionals already present on the market who would like to avoid or reduce the risk of aggressive competitive conducts by new professionals.

Moreover, the establishing of the Mutualistic Union occurs after the recent provisions of liberalization which involved notaries’ activities, among which the abrogation of the professional tariff and the limits concerning advertisement, as well as the increase in the amount of notaries and the widening of their ambit of territorial operativeness.

Rome, 27^th august 2013