ABSTRACT
The Norwegian Act on the Control of Restraints of Competition and Price Abuse of 1926, normally called the Trust Act, has been characterised as Europe’s first ‘real’ competition law (Gerber 1998: 156). Norway was the first European country to implement specific legislation enabling competition control including intervention against abuse of restraints on competition. Norway was also the first European country to introduce compulsory notification and registration of restrictive business arrangements and market dominant enterprises as well as including subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies through the provisional Price Regulation Act of 1920. That Act marked the beginning of the official cartel register, which existed to 1993. Short summaries of the main elements recorded in the notified information were printed in the Norsk Pristidende – the official gazette – of the Price Directorate (1920–1926) and in Trustkontrollen – the publication of its successor, the Trust Control Office (1926–1940) a number of times per decade. Both the public and businessmen normally gained a cursory but roughly correct impression of the relevant restrictive business arrangement notified through the gazette. The complete information of the cartel register was also accessible to the public, including the press, at the office of the Price Directorate until the enactment of the Trust Act in 1926.
