Thursday, March 4, 2021
1.
New FTC officials announced.
On Jan. 21, 2021, President Joseph Biden designated Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as acting chair of the FTC. Slaughter, a Democrat, has served as an FTC commissioner since May 2018.
On Jan. 25, 2021, FTC Chairwoman Slaughter announced a number of FTC staff leadership changes, including replacement appointments of the acting general counsel, acting directors of the FTC’s three operating bureaus (the Bureau of Consumer Protection, the Bureau of Competition, and the Bureau of Economics), as well as the acting director of the Office of Policy & Planning. The previous leaders in those offices resigned effective Jan. 29, along with departing FTC Chairman Joseph Simons.
Recently, the Second Chamber of the Mexican Supreme Court overruled the
Policy for the Reliability, Safety, Continuity and Quality of the National Electric System (the Policy ), because such Policy included unconstitutional provisions that would adversely affect competition in the electricity market. The Amendment emulates several provisions of such Policy, which is one of the reasons why it is seen as another blow to the power industry.
As mentioned in our previous analysis, one of the most relevant features of the Amendment is the modification of the dispatch order, disregarding economic efficiency mechanics, giving preference to the Federal Electricity Commission (
Comisión Federal de Electricidad CFE ) over other generation plants, which will result in more expensive and dirty energy.
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On February 23, 2021, the House of Representatives discussed and
approved the draft of the Amendment of the Electricity Industry Law
proposed by Mexico President López Obrador on February 1
(the “Amendment”), with a total of 304 votes by the
representatives of MORENA, the political party of the president
which holds a majority of seats in the House of
Representatives.
The plenary session followed up a heated discussion by the
Energy Commission of the House of Representatives on February 19,
in which the minority parties submitted a motion to include a
Mexico's antitrust authority on Monday urged lawmakers to reject a bill recently sent to Congress by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that aims to strengthen the position of the national power utility in the electricity market.