Spain: New ‘casualties’ from Internal conflict at CNMC

The Department of Promotion of Competition at Spain’s CNMC, considered to be competition hard-liners and from which various reports have emerged in support of the rising ‘sharing economy’, has lost both its director and deputy director, Antonio Maudes and Mateo Silos, within the space of one month.

Since its creation, the Department has been a combative and sometimes irritating entity for the agency and other major divisions that make up the regulator: Competition, Telecommunications, Energy and Transport. The area depends exclusively on the CNMC’s President and its mission is to promote economic competition and supervise the regulation of different public administrations, which has generated conflicts with the public sector itself.

Promotion for Competition has also authored controversial reports in favor of the shared economy as a means to break traditionally-entrenched monopolies, such as the Taxi sector. This particular case has led to a legal dispute between the Ministry of Prootion and the CNMC over the Government’s refusal to act on the orders by the regulator to boost the presence of services such as Uber and Cabify.

The issue has also resulted in strikes and various altercations. The CNMC has called for freely granting licenses to these companies, while in Fomento they have chosen to maintain a quota of one VTC license for every 30 taxi permits granted.

Full Content: El Mundo

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