Expertise and experience




Competition
Law




Competition increases efficiency and consumer welfare. Ensuring compliance with Competition Law contributes to the common good.

We tend to focus predominantly on:

• defence of plaintiffs’ rights in the private enforcement of antitrust rules;

• consultancy, notification and intervention in merger control;

• consultancy relating to State aid rules and intervention in State aid cases; 

• drafting legal opinions, namely for court cases or arbitrations, relating to the interpretation and application of competition law.



European Union Law



E.U. Law is Portuguese Law. There is no area of the Law unaffected by European Law.

We tend to focus predominantly on:

• consultancy and drafting legal opinions, namely for court cases or arbitrations, relating to the interpretation and application of EU Law;

• drafting pleadings and intervening before the Court of Justice of the European Union, in the context of referrals or of direct actions before the CJEU.




Regulatory Law




Finding the difficult balance between the need to react to market failures and the imperfection of economic intervention by the State

We tend to focus predominantly on:

• consultancy and drafting legal opinions relating to the interpretation and application of regulatory law, particularly of energy and telecommunications regulation;

• counselling of European and national regulators and their representation before the CJEU and Portuguese courts.



Other areas of the law



•  Constitutional Law

•  Administrative Law

•  Pharmaceutical Law

•  Unfair commercial practices

Experience highlights

• Represented Cogeco before the CJEU in case C-637/17, obtaining clarification of restrictions imposed by EU Law, prior to Damages Directive, on national rules on limitation period of right to damages arising from infringements of Arts. 101/102 TFEU

• Promotion of the first popular action to compensate Portuguese consumers for damage caused by anticompetitive practices (opt-out representation)

• Advising and representing large European initiatives for compensation of persons injured by the trucks cartel, in what concerns effects in Portugal

• Providing legal opinion for arbitration of antitrust dispute between large Portuguese undertakings

• Creation and implementation of competition law compliance programmes for Portuguese undertakings

• Advising undertakings and law firms, including being the Portuguese member of multinational legal teams, in the assessment of duty to notify and in the notification of mergers to the Portuguese Competition Authority

• Providing training to Portuguese public authorities on EU State aid law

• Advising the Portuguese State in infringement proceedings before the European Commission and before the CJEU

• Advising the Board of Appeal of the EU Agency for Cooperation of Energy Regulators and representing the Agency before the CJEU

• Working with two Portuguese sectoral regulators, providing legal opinions, training and representation in judicial proceeding

• Regular legal advice relating to Portugal to international consultancy in the field of telecommunications

• Recurring training and legal advice to public and private entities relating to unfair commercial practices