As the improbable reader will be aware, the regulatory virus (RV) is everywhere. The RV occurs whenever and wherever state run activities, performed (almost) free of charge by badly paid civil servants, are superseded by state run activities, performed by well paid workers of an "independent" authority, made affluent by "regulatory charges" levied on the regulated sector. In Portugal, the RV grew strong and fast, and so we have no short supply of "regulators", even if only by name: with civil service lingering, shrinking, and shaking, being part of an independent "authority" (or a dependent one, for that matter) gives one a sense of purpose - and, quite often, a boost in the pay check. (And with money coming from the under-taxed big business, and not from the ailing state budget, rightly so, someone might add). Fascinating as this may be, it´s not what is in the paper - and goes only as a background for what I discuss there: - First, that regulatory authorities have became exactly what they were supposed not to be: an alias for Government (every other power - even the Judiciary, which, by law, provided personnel to the presidency of our first authorities, in order, one might reason, to keep them at a distance from the political meddling - was effectively removed, by subsequent legislation, from the selection process of their board). - Second, that there is a big difference in having (or not having) enough independence from the Government, and being (or not being) a "regulator": the first depends on what it is, the second depends on what it does. One can have both, or only one. In fact, lately, the Government-created authorities seem to have broken altogether the connection. (The pertinence of this will show itself later). - There was still a third question to dispose of before I got to the main point (the distinction between "administrative regulation" and "market regulation", so to say): and that concerned the limits of what "regulation" is (I mean: of what "administrative" regulation, or "regulation proper", is). A suggestion was made that there is no distinction between economic and non-economic regulation - and so one can not pretend it to be, for instance, "the correction of market failures", or some other economic biased description of fact-and-function. So, I ended up with three types of activities, all of them present in some of the regulators (economic as non economic), but not necessarily in each one of them: norm creation, command&control, and adjudication. In Portugal, both the Parliament and the Government can create laws, but it would not make sense - if we want to dwell into the problems created by independent arms of the state devoid of democratic legitimacy and able to focus the three traditional powers of the sate - to call them "regulators". On the other hand, any other INDEPENDENT institution that can put out standards of action that are compelling to outsiders can properly be called a "regulator". (If not independent, the problem of the legitimacy of the "regulation" vanishes: it has the legitimacy of the public administration, which rests in the legislative and executive powers of the Government). Leaving aside the questions that can arise from the other two man made interventions (command&control and adjudication - there will be another paper on that) that was something to go: we have a "regulation problem" when we have independent rule making. In a nutshell, that's it. And that's why the antitrust authorities are not - and apart their activity of merger&acquisitions control should not be deemed as - "regulators". Of course they control the market: but they should not command it. The activity of the competition authorities have close connections with the activity of the (true) regulators. But theirs is an altogether different task: they are not supposed to impose their views on the economic agents - they are supposed to see that no one does that. There are a great number of well known differences between those authorities and regulators (these last, act beforehand; they impose binding norms to outsiders; specialized and complex norms; and those norms tell the agents what they can not do, but, mainly, tell them what they have to do; and the regulators are constantly - or should be - in their backs, or steering them; regulators fix prices, rates of profit, quality standards, conditions of entry; they are even, sometimes, responsible for the "economic solvency of the regulated enterprises"). On the other hand, competition authorities do the exact opposite (they act after - exception being, as said, the ex ante control of mergers&acquisitions; they approve guidelines - or whatever - binding to themselves; they do not create rules for the market: they try to avoid the bending of the market rules; they punish those trying, so they enforce what not to do; and they should do it with a sharp and short action; they try their best that nobody can fix prices, rates of profit, quality standards, or conditions of entry; and they surely should not be responsible for the "economic solvency" of any enterprise). So, the general idea is this: as with the two great systems of economic organization, the market and the plan, there are two ways of dealing (outside the direct state intervention) with the market (I could add, as a pun, that, probably, those would be the same two ways of dealing with the plan): - if the independent authority acts according to a plan (even if that plan is one of shaping a market, in order to drive herself out), that is, if we can trace the spring of the economic decision in the said authority, then we are in the regulation field; - if the independent authority acts without interfering with the laws of the market, trying to prevent their nullification, and if the spring of economic decisions is the market itself, then we are out and clear of the regulation field, and there is much abuse calling the competition authorities "regulators" (again: apart when they prevent mergers&acquisitions). Let me end with a zen note: Regulation and competition are so connected as the Yin and Yang of Oriental philosophy. It would be a mistake to take one for the other, as they evolve in opposite directions.