Unfair Contract Terms Before the Italian Competition Authority (ICA)

The newly-introduced Art 37-bis of the Consumer Code provided the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) with new powers aimed at scrutinizing – ex ante or ex post – the unfairness of the terms included in standard contracts between traders and consumers. This paper analyses the legislative provision (as supplemented by secondary regulation) in view of the decisions adopted by the ICA over the past few years in order to shed light on how that administrative body has exercised its prerogatives.