Federal Act
on Cartels and other
Restraints of Competition
(Cartel Act, CartA)

¹ The fol­low­ing may come for­ward in or­der to take part in an in­vest­ig­a­tion con­cern­ing a re­straint of com­pet­i­tion:

a.

per­sons who as a res­ult of a re­straint of com­pet­i­tion are hindered from start­ing or con­tinu­ing to com­pete;

b.

pro­fes­sion­al or trade as­so­ci­ations whose bylaws au­thor­ise them to safe­guard their mem­bers' eco­nom­ic in­terests, provided mem­bers of the as­so­ci­ation or of one of its sec­tions may also take part in the in­vest­ig­a­tion;

c.

or­gan­isa­tions of na­tion­al or re­gion­al im­port­ance whose work is ded­ic­ated to con­sumer pro­tec­tion un­der the terms of their bylaws.

² The Sec­ret­ari­at may re­quire in a pro­ced­ure that groups of more than five par­ti­cipants who have identic­al in­terests ap­point a com­mon rep­res­ent­at­ive if oth­er­wise the in­vest­ig­a­tion would be un­duly com­plic­ated. It may in any event lim­it par­ti­cip­a­tion to a hear­ing only; the rights of parties un­der the Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968⁴² are re­served.

³ Para­graphs 1 and 2 above ap­ply by ana­logy to the pro­ced­ure for grant­ing an ex­cep­tion­al au­thor­isa­tion for an un­law­ful re­straint of com­pet­i­tion by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil (Art. 8).

⁴ In pro­ceed­ings for the re­view of con­cen­tra­tions of un­der­tak­ings, only the un­der­tak­ings con­cerned have the rights of parties.