Antitrust Enforcement Against Restrictive Labour Markets Agreements: Portuguese Experience

• Jurisdiction: European Union
• Year: 2025

Speaker

Sónia Ramos Moura is a Senior Legal Officer at the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC), where she has held various roles since 2004. Her work spans merger control, legal and litigation affairs, and economic analysis. From 2016 to 2018, she served as Internal Coordinator for the AdC/OECD Competition Impact Assessment of Public Policies Project, evaluating pro-competition reforms in two sectors of the Portuguese economy.

Before joining the AdC, Sónia worked as a VAT consultant at Ernst & Young Portugal and as a Blue Book trainee at the European Commission’s Merger Task Force in Brussels. She also completed a legal traineeship and briefly practiced law in Lisbon.

Sónia holds a law degree from the University of Lisbon, a D.E.S.U.P. in European Legal and Economic Studies from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and an LL.M./D.E.A. in European Legal Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges. She also completed the coursework for a PhD in Law at NOVA University Lisbon.

Topic

In this EU-presentation at ERA’s Annual Conference on European Competition Law 2024, Sónia Ramos Moura, Senior Legal Officer at the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC), explores antitrust enforcement against restrictive labour market agreements. The presentation outlines how certain labour market practices—particularly no-poach and wage-fixing agreements—can constitute serious violations of EU competition law under Article 101(1) TFEU.

Moura discusses the AdC’s advocacy initiatives, including its 2021 Issues Paper and Best Practices, and highlights empirical evidence showing how increased market concentration leads to wage suppression and reduced mobility. She clarifies that while non-compete clauses may fall outside the scope of competition law, coordinated employer agreements to restrict hiring or fix wages are considered harmful “by object” restrictions, unlikely to benefit from exemption.

A key case examined is the AdC’s 2022 decision on a no-poach agreement among Portuguese football clubs, sanctioned for reducing players' options and harming both competition and match quality.

The presentation provides an overview of recent EU trends and case law, reinforcing that...