Can the Public Administration be sanctioned by Competition Authorities when they do not conduct economic activities but they restrain competition or promote anticompetitive conducts?

Occasionally firms’ anticompetitive conducts have been preceded or coupled with public powers actions that incentivize, promote or sponsor them. In other cases competition restraints distorting market functioning come directly from administrative action without legal coverage. Recent decisions of Spanish Competition Authorities offer several examples of some of these situations, which are neither unknown in other jurisdictions. This paper reviews them and critically assesses the treatment given by Spanish Competition Authorities to public powers interventions.