A Body That Woke Up
For most of its history, Algeria’s Competition Council (Conseil de la Concurrence) was a largely theoretical institution. Established under Ordinance 03-03 on Competition and modified by Law 08-12, the Council held the formal mandate to combat anti-competitive practices — price-fixing, market-sharing agreements, and abuse of dominant position — across all economic sectors. In practice, however, the Council remained dormant for extended stretches, hampered by incomplete membership, limited operational resources, and a legal culture that prioritized sector-by-sector licensing over cross-sector competition enforcement.
That changed materially between October 2024 and February 2025. In October 2024, the Council conducted its first-ever dawn raids — unannounced, in-person investigative inspections of business premises — marking a watershed moment for Algerian antitrust enforcement. Dawn raids are the most intrusive enforcement tool available to competition authorities; their use signals that the Council has both the legal confidence and the operational capacity to act. In February 2025, a new Council composition was formally announced, completing a reconstitution process that had been in gestation. The combined effect is an institution that is structurally renewed and behaviourally activated.
For Algeria’s technology, telecommunications, and digital platform sector, this matters in ways that most compliance teams have not yet fully assessed.
The Dual Enforcement Architecture and Its Digital Dimension
Understanding why the Competition Council’s revival is particularly consequential for tech operators requires understanding how Algerian competition law structures enforcement in regulated sectors.
Under the Law on Post and Electronic Communications (May 2018), the Regulatory Authority of Posts and Electronic Communications (ARPCE) holds concurrent jurisdiction over competition in the electronic communications market. ARPCE can designate operators as “powerful operators” — the Algerian equivalent of the EU’s significant market power concept — and impose asymmetric obligations on them. This ex ante regulation is the standard telecom-sector tool: set rules before harm occurs.
The Competition Council operates on a different basis. Its intervention is principally ex post: it investigates and sanctions conduct that has already occurred, including abuse of dominant position (Article 7 of Ordinance 03-03) and anti-competitive agreements (Article 6). In the telecommunications sector, both ARPCE and the Competition Council can intervene simultaneously, each under its own legal basis. Academic analysis of Algerian competition law published in the Journal of African Law confirms this dual-track structure is intentional, not accidental — the legislature designed the two authorities to complement each other, with ARPCE providing structural oversight and the Council addressing behavioural violations.
For the three major mobile operators — Mobilis, Djezzy, and Ooredoo — who hold newly awarded 5G licenses costing a combined DZD 63.9 billion ($492 million), this dual architecture is immediately relevant. Their license conditions impose coverage obligations and service quality requirements monitored by ARPCE. But if any operator engages in bundling practices, exclusionary contracts, or pricing strategies that harm competitors or restrict market access, the Competition Council is now an independently credible enforcement threat — not a theoretical one.
The digital platform sector faces comparable exposure. Platforms with significant market presence in Algeria — whether in e-commerce, ride-hailing, food delivery, or digital advertising — can be investigated by the Council for abuse of dominant position under Article 7 of Ordinance 03-03. The existing article competition-law-digital-markets-platform-dominance covered the legal framework broadly; the Council’s operational revival transforms that framework from dormant law into live risk.
What the October 2024 Dawn Raids Signal
The significance of the October 2024 dawn raids extends beyond the immediate investigation targets. Dawn raids are a legal and logistical capability-intensive enforcement action. They require legal authorization, trained investigators who can handle electronic evidence, coordination across multiple simultaneous entry points, and protocols for seizing business records — including digital records — that can withstand judicial review.
The fact that the Council conducted dawn raids for the first time in October 2024 signals several things:
First, the Council has invested in operational infrastructure. Dawn raids are not improvised; their execution reflects months of preparation, including the recruitment of investigators with relevant expertise, the development of internal procedures, and engagement with the judiciary to secure the necessary authorizations.
Second, the Council has a case pipeline. Dawn raids occur when an investigation reaches the point where the Council believes documents or electronic records it needs are at risk of destruction. A new institution conducting its first dawn raids in October 2024 is signalling it had already been building cases before that date.
Third, enforcement is no longer sector-neutral. The sectors where dawn raids occurred have not been publicly identified in available official sources, but the mere existence of this enforcement capability means no sector — including digital markets, e-commerce platforms, or telecom distribution — can assume immunity from investigation.
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A Three-Pillar Compliance Framework for Digital Operators
For technology companies operating in Algeria, the Competition Council’s revival requires a structured compliance response. The following framework addresses the three most consequential risk areas.
1. Conduct a Market Position Assessment Before the Council Does
The first obligation is to understand your own market position under Algerian competition law. Dominant position is not prohibited; abuse of dominant position is. Article 7 of Ordinance 03-03 prohibits acts by dominant-position enterprises that restrict or falsify competition, including predatory pricing, refusal to deal with competitors, tying and bundling, and exclusionary distribution agreements.
Before any enforcement contact occurs, tech operators should commission an internal assessment that answers three questions: Does the company hold a dominant position in any Algerian market (typically defined as a market share above 40%, though no legal threshold is formally set)? Do any current commercial practices — pricing, distribution exclusivity, API access policies, platform listing terms — constitute abuse of that position under Algerian law? Are any distribution or partnership agreements in force that could constitute anti-competitive agreements under Article 6 (cartels or market-sharing)?
This assessment should be updated annually. The Council’s new composition in February 2025 means new members who may apply different interpretive emphasis than their predecessors, even under the same legal texts.
2. Prepare Electronic Evidence and Document Retention Procedures
Dawn raids increasingly target digital records: email archives, internal messaging platforms, pricing algorithm documentation, board minutes, and commercial strategy presentations. Companies that have never faced a dawn raid underestimate how quickly an investigation can pivot on a single email thread.
Algerian companies and Algerian subsidiaries of international groups should implement document retention policies that are defensible from both a legal compliance perspective (satisfying accounting and corporate governance requirements) and a competition investigation perspective (avoiding destruction of documents that, if retained, demonstrate legitimate business rationale for conduct under review).
Specifically: do not implement ad hoc document deletion policies when a regulatory investigation appears possible. Under Algerian law, obstruction of an official investigation — including destruction of evidence after an inquiry has begun — constitutes an aggravating factor that can increase penalties. The safer posture is a standing, formally documented retention policy that applies consistently regardless of whether any investigation is pending.
3. Map Agreements with Competitors for Cartel Exposure
Article 6 of Ordinance 03-03 prohibits agreements, conventions, or concerted practices that have the object or effect of restricting or distorting competition. Industry associations, technical standards bodies, joint purchasing arrangements, and revenue-sharing agreements with competitors all require review against this standard.
In the digital ecosystem, this includes: interoperability agreements between platform operators, data-sharing arrangements between fintech and banking partners, co-marketing deals where pricing coordination occurs, and collective lobbying positions that include market-allocation elements. The test under Algerian competition law focuses on the object or effect of the arrangement — a benign-looking technical agreement can still violate Article 6 if its practical effect is to reduce competitive pressure between the parties.
The Algeria-Wide Context: MENA Competition Enforcement Is Accelerating
Algeria’s Competition Council revival does not occur in isolation. Across the Middle East and North Africa, competition authorities have been revitalized, restructured, or expanded since 2022. Morocco’s Competition Council was reinforced by constitutional amendment and has issued several formal opinions on digital markets since 2023. Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Competition has investigated major platform operators. UAE authorities are examining digital market concentration in fintech and logistics.
The international trend is consistent: regulators who previously treated digital markets as self-correcting are now applying traditional competition frameworks — often adapted from EU or US precedents — to platform conduct. Algeria’s Competition Council is part of this regional pattern, accelerated by the availability of enforcement tools from peer jurisdictions and the appointment of Council members familiar with modern competition economics.
For Algerian operators, the relevant implication is that international legal precedents — particularly EU case law on platform dominance — will increasingly inform how the Council analyzes digital markets. The EU’s findings against Google in search advertising (€2.95 billion fine, September 2025), Apple in app distribution (€500 million, April 2025), and Meta in consent modelling (€200 million, April 2025) are legal reference points that Algerian investigators will study, even if Algeria is not bound by EU decisions.
What Comes Next
The Competition Council’s first enforcement cycle will define its institutional character for the next decade. The cases it chooses to pursue, the industries it targets first, and the penalties it imposes will signal whether the 2025 reconstitution represents genuine enforcement ambition or another intermission before dormancy.
Three indicators to monitor in 2026 and 2027: whether the Council publishes formal investigation procedures clarifying its enforcement priorities in digital markets; whether it issues formal opinions on the competitive impact of the 5G license allocation and any bundling practices by the three operators; and whether it engages publicly with the ARPCE on cases where both authorities could claim jurisdiction.
Operators who wait for the first high-profile Competition Council case against a digital company before reviewing their practices are taking a material risk. The October 2024 dawn raids and the February 2025 reconstitution are the warning that enforcement is real. The structurally prudent response is compliance investment now — not after the first investigation letter arrives.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between ARPCE enforcement and the Competition Council’s enforcement for telecom operators?
ARPCE exercises ex ante regulation — it sets rules in advance through licensing conditions, spectrum obligations, and “powerful operator” designations. The Competition Council operates ex post, investigating conduct after it occurs under the general competition law framework. Both can apply simultaneously: an operator can face ARPCE regulatory action for a licensing violation while also facing a Competition Council investigation for abuse of dominant position over the same commercial conduct. The dual-track structure is intentional under Algerian law and requires operators to maintain compliance with both frameworks independently.
What triggered Algeria’s Competition Council to conduct its first dawn raids in October 2024?
The specific investigation targets of the October 2024 dawn raids have not been publicly disclosed by the Council. Dawn raids typically occur when an authority believes critical documentary evidence may be at risk of destruction or alteration. The Council’s decision to use this tool for the first time signals both that it had been building cases before 2024 and that it had invested sufficiently in operational infrastructure — legal authorization procedures, trained investigators, digital evidence protocols — to execute inspections that would withstand judicial challenge.
How does Algerian competition law define “dominant position” for digital platforms?
Ordinance 03-03 does not specify a fixed market share threshold for dominant position. In practice, Algerian competition analysis typically examines whether an operator has sufficient market power to behave independently of competitive pressure — a functional assessment similar to the EU approach. Market definition is the critical first step: a platform with 60% of the ride-hailing market in Algiers may or may not hold a dominant position depending on how the relevant geographic and product market is defined. Operators in digital markets where alternative platforms face high barriers to entry face higher dominant-position risk, even at market shares below 50%.
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Sources & Further Reading
- Algeria: Competition Council — Global Competition Review
- The Interaction Between the Competition Council and ARPCE in Algerian Law — Journal of African Law, Cambridge Core
- Focus on Recent Competition Law Developments in Africa — Gide
- 2025 Investment Climate Statements: Algeria — U.S. Department of State
- How Are Competition Laws Heating Up in MENA — Kluwer Competition Law Blog
