DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Law and Practice Contributed by: Sarah de León Perelló, Elizabeth Silfa Micheli and Naomi Rodríguez Manzueta, Headrick Rizik Álvarez & Fernández
connection with banking matters, there is no data pro - tection authority that supervises compliance with the legal framework. Habeas Data In that sense, most of the claims must be resolved utilising the general or common procedures that Dominican courts have instituted. The Constitution of the Dominican Republic provides any person with the opportunity to initiate a “habeas data” claim. A habeas data claim is a legal action through which any person can confirm the existence of their personal data in registries, as well as the content of said data. Through habeas data, in the event of falsehood or discrimi - nation, the person may also request the suspension, rectification, confidentiality or update of the data. 9. Looking Forward 9.1 Upcoming Legal Reforms Proposed Amendment to Competition Law No 42-08 A draft bill recently submitted to the Executive Branch by ProCompetencia would comprehensively overhaul and repeal Competition Law No 42-08, introducing, among other reforms, a pre-merger notification regime for the first time. Under the proposal, parties to merg - ers, acquisitions, or other transactions involving the acquisition of control would be required to notify the Antitrust and Economic Competition Authority ( Autori- dad Nacional Antimonopolio y Competencia Económi- ca – ANACE) ‒ the proposed new name for the current regulator, ProCompetencia ‒ prior to closing.
Two key features of this proposal merit attention. First, the introduction of an ex-ante merger control regime represents a significant change for a small economy such as the Dominican Republic, where minimum efficient scale often represents a significant share of the relevant market. A more practical approach would be to focus on policies that enable robust ex post enforcement against abuses of dominant posi - tion, among others, in order to preserve transactional efficiency. Second, the filing threshold is drawn too broadly. Notification would be triggered whenever the parties ‒ jointly or individually ‒ generated gross rev - enues exceeding DOP200 million in the prior fiscal year, a low bar that risks capturing transactions that raise no genuine competition concerns, unnecessar - ily increasing costs and extending closing timelines. This concern is further compounded by the absence of an automatic inflation adjustment mechanism, which would leave any future threshold adjustment to ANACE’s board’s discretion, without a safeguard against its progressive erosion in real terms.
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