Author: Ilya Sushil’nikov
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2022-6-108-131
Keywords: competition; constitutional law; constitutional principles; public-private partnership; constitutional courts
The author examines the constitutional principles of support for competition and prohibition of economic activities aimed at unfair competition as the constitutional basis of the implementation of public-private partnerships. The paper is devoted to an analysis of the application of the concepts of law and economics to instances of competition of constitutional provisions. Constitutional principles forming the basis of antitrust law and of a public-private partnership can be scrutinized with the help of the economic analysis of law. Such economic phenomena as public-private partnerships and competition regulation should be scrutinized under constitutional provisions. The constitutional foundation of anti-monopoly protection in Russia is found in Articles 8 and 34 of the Russian Constitution. Public-private partnerships in a broader sense, as a form of economic activity in the Russian Federation, are based on the constitutional principles of unity of economic space, liberty of economic activity, support of competition and the principle of free use of one’s abilities and property for entrepreneurial and other economic activities not prohibited by law. The author states that the principle of social, political and economic solidarity that was introduced into the constitutional legal field by recent amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation can serve as a guiding principle of the public-private partnership. Constitutional provisions can interact with each other, forming a potential conflict that may lead to the assessment of conflicting constitutional principles underlying such provisions by the Constitutional Court of Russia. The author gives an analysis of rulings of the Russian Federation Constitutional Court and of the Constitutional Council of France dedicated to the field of public-private partnership. As a result it is shown that the constitutional principles of equality before state structures and public interest constitute the essence of the public-private partnership. The author specifies that an economic analysis of law can be applied to constitutional law provisions concerning antitrust regulations, providing examples of this application in the practice of the Constitutional Court of Russia. The author recognizes that the principle of support for competition and the principle of freedom of economic activity compete with each other, so that the objective of courts is to strike a fair balance between these principles.
About the author: Ilya Sushil’nikov – Ph.D. Student at Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Sushil’nikov I. (2022) The constitutional basis of anti-monopoly control and competition regulation in the implementation of public-private partnerships. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 108–131.
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