영국의 시장조사제도에 관한 연구 - 공정거래법과 전기통신사업법에 대한 시사점을 포함하여 -

The European Commission (EC) recently announced its roadmap on ‘New Competition Tool (NCT)’ aimed at fulfilling the goal of providing effective measures to address structural competition problems in digital markets. As the new tool is proposed to tackle structural issues of markets by allowing timely and effective intervention against markets, increased attention is given to the UK’s market investigation (MI) authority which has features seemingly fitting the goal of the EC’s proposal of NCT. The MI is a unique tool in the UK’s markets regime as it leads to direct remedies for the subject market(s) without finding any individual violation of the competition law. If the EC adopts and applies a new tool akin to the MI, a significant change will be made to the competition rule of European Union and its impact is not expected to remain within the Union. Thus it would be proper and timely to review the features of the UK’s MI regime and its implication on the design of NCT and our market study system. This paper explores the procedural features of the UK’s MI regime and discusses its benefits and potential risks. Also addressed will be the prospect of its role in the design of NCT as well as several considerations to be given in regard to referencing MI’s systemic features and the relevant experience of the UK’s competition authority in its design. While the UK’s MI regime has specific benefits of filling the gap of existing competition tools by functioning as a direct measure to discover and solve root causes of the competition problems in the subject market(s), which cannot be effectively addressed by conventional regulatory or enforcive activities, there are risks of preempting other competition tools resulting in inefficient allocation of investigatory resources of the competition authority. But more important is that a tool designed for directly remedying anti-competitive effects in markets would allow for frequent or unnecessary intervention into the functioning of markets, and consequently bring about market distortion. Although its inherent benefits entitle MI due credits and provide considerable implications for improvement of our market study system, careful approaches are required when considering adoption of an MI-like system. In such review, it is advisable to consider differences between the UK’s legal system and ours, maintaining a balanced view on the benefits and risks of MI.