Law on Consumer Protection and Consumer Benefit

By bringing together the competition, supply and demand, which form the lifeblood of the free market economy, without any intervention in market conditions, it ensures that the scarce resources of the society are distributed in the most effective way and are used in the most efficient way, and the goods and services are offered to consumers at the lowest price and in high quality. Therefore, the efficient functioning of the market economy system and realizing the benefits expected from it can only be possible if a competitive environment is created in the markets. (one)

Competition laws, on the other hand, are the state’s intervention tool for the economy in order to ensure and protect free competition. Competition laws prohibit undertakings from restricting competition in a particular market of goods or services, through agreements, concentrations, or abuse of market power. Thus, while the activities that might harm the competition order of the undertakings are taken under control and ineffective, equality of opportunity and enterprise freedom are ensured for the undertakings, while economic efficiency and social welfare and consequently consumer welfare are increased. However, it should not be forgotten that the companies that are the first and direct influences of the competition protective objectives and measures of competition law are the market actors. For this reason, laws refer to businesses rather than consumers. On the other hand, the largest segment of the competition is the consumers who benefit from the laws. Because the most important result of the competition is the decrease in prices, product variety, increase in quality and after-sales services are always in the benefit of consumers. Even if the consumer is not explicitly mentioned, one of the hidden objectives of the competition laws and perhaps the most important is the protection of the consumer. (2-3) Therefore, although the competition laws do not primarily pursue the consumer benefit, in other words, they provide the benefit of the consumer as a result of the improvements they bring to economic life.

II- Consumer Protection and Competition Relations in the Constitution

According to Article 167 of the Constitution, “The state takes measures to ensure and develop healthy and orderly functioning of the money, capital, goods and services markets; It prevents monopolization and cartelization that will arise as a result of actual or agreement in the markets. … ”According to Article 172,“ The state takes protective and enlightening measures for consumers and encourages consumers to protect themselves. ” In fact, it can be said that the said provisions are compatible with each other. As a matter of fact, in the reason of article 172, the idea of consumer protection lies behind the competition law. In the justification in question, “… protection of consumers is a social problem, and the measures to be introduced in this regard should protect consumers on the one hand, but at the same time, refer the producers and sellers to competition among them. Consumer protection is a free market economy measure. This basis should not be ignored in the measure of consumer protective rules. … It can be secured by protecting the consumer in terms of price and quality, providing free competition conditions, and preventing monopoly and cartels. ” As can be seen, our Constitution also predicted that consumer protection can only be possible with the existence of a free market economy.

As a matter of fact, in a decision taken by the Constitutional Court, (4) regarding the evaluation of the articles in question, it was stressed that the duty of the State to prevent the monopolization and cartelization was mainly for the purpose of protecting the consumer and emphasizing that Article 172 of the Constitution had a very close relationship with Article 167. It has been stated that the duty of protecting the consumers given to the State with the article can only be secured by providing free competition conditions by preventing monopolization and cartelization, and the effectiveness of the market economy depends on the existence of perfect competition conditions and the market economy will lose its effectiveness in environments that allow monopolization or cartelization.

III- Laws No. 4054 on Consumer Benefits Regulations

In accordance with the article 167 above, both the constitutional and European Union relations and economic obligations (5) have been determined in the Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition, which is illegal and prohibited, and in some articles directly or indirectly. consumer benefit has been observed.

According to Article 4 of the Law in question, inter-enterprise agreements, compatible actions and undertakings of associations that have the purpose of preventing, distorting or restricting competition directly or indirectly in a particular goods or services market, such actions and undertakings of enterprise associations and their actions are illegal and prohibited. (6) It is possible to divide the competition-limiting transactions under this article into two categories, horizontal and vertical limitations. (7) It is generally accepted that the negative effects on competition are higher than vertical restrictive agreements, but