PROFESSIONS: ANTITRUST LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO THE MUTUAL UNION OF PUBLIC NOTAIRES IN VENETO IN CONNECTION WITH A POSSIBLE RESTRICTIVE AGREEMENT ON COMPETITION

The Union, established by some professionals in Treviso, provides for the pooling of a percentage of the proceeds of individual practitioners to be shared equally between them all. This way there may be a lesser interest to compete among participating notaries.

At its meeting held on 31^st July 2013, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato decided to launch an investigation to establish whether the setting up of a Mutual Union among public notaries in Veneto could constitute a restrictive agreement on competition.

According to the Antitrust, the association, made up of several professionals from the notarial district of Treviso, could serve as a means of restricting competition. The objective of the union in fact is to pool a share of the proceeds of public notaries who are its members so as to distribute this amount among them later in equal shares: this way individual public notaries, regardless of the professional work undertaken, would be guaranteed a monthly minimum income by the association (and, therefore, substantially by one’s own competitors). This could lead to a lessening of the urge to find new customers through a competitive attitude such as improved service levels or lower tariffs. The agreement would in this way give an anti-competitive advantage both to newly-appointed public notaries in the district who could rely on a level of guaranteed income as well as to professionals who are already on the market and who would avoid or reduce the risk of aggressive competitive conduct on the part of the new professionals.

The setting up of a Mutual Union takes place, moreover, after the recent liberalization measures that have influenced notarial activity including the repeal of the professional tariff and of the limit for publicity as well as the increase in the number of public notaries and widening in the scope of their operational activities.