Today, on 12 November, it is the 23rd anniversary of the protection of competition in Latvia.
The competition law in Latvia can be divided in several historic stages. After Latvia regained its independence, a new law was adopted and the Monopoly Monitoring Committee was founded. In times when the free market economy and its underlying private property was only developing, the newly founded authority acted as an ombudsman of the economic and operated with the widest range of issues, which inevitably arose in situations when cooperation principles among society, businesses and the state were yet to be established.
In 1998, the Competition Law entered into the force and on the base of the Committee a new institution was formed – the Competition Council. The new law gave authority sanctions allowing to effectively combat infringements and obligating to focus on operation of market participants in the context of the Competition Law. Although the Law gave the opportunity to prevent competition infringements, the authority still lacked the power and real sanctions to prevent from competition restrictions. Therefore, in 2002, approaching the time when Latvia joined the European Union, the new Competition Law was adopted and is still in force, providing effective protection of the competition within all the markets.