In August 2022, Law no. 17/2022 transposed Directive (EU) 2019/1 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 11, 2018 into national law. This transposition resulted in the need for the AdC to approve the necessary regulations to ensure the implementation of the terms of the settlement procedure (Terms of the Settlement Procedure), within two years of the entry into force of the aforementioned law.

In this context, the draft Terms of the Settlement Procedure now up for public consultation seeks to respond to these circumstances, systematizing and detailing the procedures adopted by the AdC with regard to the settlement instrument - provided for in articles 22 and 27 of Law no. 19/2012, of May 8 (Law no. 19/2012), in order to foster better cooperation between the AdC and the parties involved in such procedures.

Without prejudice to the general guidelines set out in the Guidelines on the Conduct of Proceedings relating to the application of Articles 9, 11 and 12 of Law no. 19/2012, and Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (LOIP), the Terms of the Settlement Procedure are intended to give concrete form to the procedure followed by the AdC in the application of the procedural instrument in question. The Terms of the Settlement Procedure are intended to specify the procedure followed by the AdC in applying the procedural instrument in question, with the aim of creating greater predictability and legal certainty for the AdC's interlocutors in this matter, even though there may be specific cases whose particularities justify a different course of action from that defined in the Terms of the Settlement Procedure and the LOIP. The Terms of the Settlement Procedure do not create or modify any rights or obligations arising from Law no. 19/2012, the AdC Bylaws or any other applicable legal provisions.

The Terms of the Settlement Procedure are structured as follows: section I refers to general considerations about the object and purpose of the Terms of the Settlement Procedure; section II refers to the procedural initiative to the procedure adopted by the AdC in the investigation phase of the cases, section III refers to settlement discussions; section IV refers to the submission of a settlement proposal to the AdC; section V refers to the final decision in cases using the settlement instrument; and finally section VI details the particularities of access to the file in which a settlement procedure takes place.

In view of the above, the AdC, in compliance with article 66 of Law no. 19/2012 and article 100(1) of the Code of Administrative Procedure, submits the draft Terms of the Settlement Procedure to public consultation and invites all interested parties to send their comments on it by June 5, 2024, to the following email address: consultapublica@concorrencia.pt.

The comments submitted must identify the interested party, as well as their contact details and the subject "Draft Terms of the Settlement Procedure".
The results of the public consultation will be published on the AdC's website, so comments must, if applicable, be accompanied by a non-confidential version and the respective grounds for confidentiality, failing which they will be made public