Mexico’s new competition authority after the 2025 reforms: a brief status update
Marta Loubet Mezquita
Ritch Mueller y Nicolau, Mexico City
Julia Fuentes Andersson
Ritch Mueller y Nicolau, Mexico City
Nearly a year into operation, the new Mexican competition authority, the Comisión Nacional Antimonopolio (the CNA) demonstrates technical and institutional continuity with its predecessor, while operating under a more assertive enforcement framework.
The creation of the CNA was formed through the following two reforms of the competition regime in Mexico (Reforms) from December 2024 and July 2025.
On 20 December 2024, President Claudia Sheinbaum published in the Official Daily of the Federation (DOF or Diario Oficial de la Federación) a decree that amended and added several articles to the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States (Constitutional Reform). Among other amendments, the decree eliminated seven autonomous government bodies (Organismos Constitucionales Autónomos), including the previous Mexican competition authorities, the Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE or Comisión Federal de Competencia Económica) and the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT or Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones), the regulator for the telecoms and broadcasting sectors. In eliminating agencies that were independent, such as COFECE and the IFT, the Constitutional Reform proposed to merge and transfer their powers to the executive branch.
On 16 July 2025, the President published in the DOF a second decree which amended the Mexican Federal Economic Competition Law (Ley Federal de Competencia Económica), as well as the Federal Law of Parastatal Entities (Ley Federal de las Entidades Paraestatales) (Antitrust Reform). The Antitrust Reform mandated the elimination of COFECE and the IFT, transferring their legal authority (in the case of the IFT, only regarding competition matters in the telecoms and broadcasting sectors) to the new authority, the CNA.
The CNA began operations on 17 October 2025, marking the end of the institutional transition period caused by the Reforms and the implementation of the new competition framework in Mexico. With the recent publication of the CNA’s 2026–2030 Institutional Programme in the DOF on 30 June 2026, the authority has given a clearer view on how it intends to use its expanded mandate, based on a more socially oriented enforcement agenda (2026–2030 Programme). The Programme indicates that the CNA’s priorities are likely to focus on markets where competition is more relevant for consumers and businesses, including financial services, agri-food, health, telecoms and broadcasting, transport and logistics, and public procurement.
Ten months after the CNA came into effect, the early operational evidence is mixed but not discouraging. The CNA has maintained much of its leadership and institutional organisation, with experienced officials from COFECE remaining in key roles within the CNA, such as Andrea Marván Saltiel, the Chairwoman of the Board of Commissioners of the CAN, who was the former Chairwoman of COFECE.
The CNA also has stronger means to investigate and sanction anticompetitive conduct, across cartel enforcement, abuse-of-dominance investigations, and merger-control matters. The Reforms significantly increased penalties, reinforcing the Commission’s deterrent capacity. In practice, this new antitrust framework is not merely a continuation of the former regime under a new name, rather a more demanding enforcement framework for the CNA with broader powers and greater exposure to political scrutiny.
With respect to merger control, the economic thresholds and the percentage of accumulation of assets or shares to determine whether a transaction must obtain prior authorisation from the CNA have been significantly reduced through this Antitrust Reform. As a result, more filings are expected to fall within the CNA’s filing regime. In parallel, transactions which might previously have appeared relatively straightforward may now require more thorough preparation, as the CNA has been requesting more detailed information on market structures, competitive effects and the parties’ structures in transactions.
At the same time, the CNA has had to operate with reduced staff while absorbing the competition caseload inherited from the IFT. This has included new responsibilities in telecoms and broadcasting, and issuing the secondary regulation as part of the Antitrust Reform. These tasks sit alongside reduced statutory deadlines to expedite certain processes, including the deadlines for resolving merger-control filings, and the increased number of transactions that trigger the new merger control thresholds, which may be increasing pressure on the CNA’s resources.
The Reform has reduced the formal decision period for notified concentrations, but this does not necessarily mean that parties should expect materially shorter end-to-end reviews. Indeed, the maximum period for the CNA to issue a resolution regarding notified concentrations was halved from 60 to 30 business days, which may be extended in exceptionally complex cases by up to 20 additional business days. In practice, however, the statutory review period begins only after a filing is admitted, so the actual timeline will continue to depend on the efficiency of pre-admission review and the scope of any requests for clarification by the CNA case handlers.
Filing costs have become a more prominent feature of merger planning in Mexico. As of 19 December 2025, the flat merger filing fee has been replaced with a substantially higher bracket-based system tied to transaction value. The new system is based on determining the ‘Maximum Estimated Value’ of the transaction in Mexico (Valor Máximo Estimado or ‘VME’), using a parameter that reflects the highest possible value, from a wide range of possible ways for calculating such a value (eg, target’s assets, capital stock or price of the transaction). Merger control filings must explain and justify VME methodology used and, until now, the CNA has indicated some flexibility when parties make such good-faith calculations. However, inconsistencies in determining the VME may trigger clarification requests or sanctions in cases of falsification.
Finally, regarding independence, the CNA is a decentralised public agency, with technical and operational autonomy, but it is structurally close to the executive branch, as opposed to its predecessors, COFECE and the IFT.
For companies, the Reforms have created a more demanding competition regime in Mexico. Lower merger filing thresholds are expected to capture a greater number of transactions and at the same time, shorter formal review periods, stronger investigative tools, increased fines, higher filing fees, and expanded scrutiny of unnotified transactions raise antitrust exposure for economic agents in Mexico. Moreover, compliance programmes are also becoming more relevant, as the new framework contemplates the certification of antitrust compliance programmes and their potential importance as a mitigating factor.
Companies with Mexican-source income or operational ties – and more so, in any of the sectors identified in the CNA’s 2026–2030 Programme – should review their antitrust risk assessment considering a more assertive authority, with expanded powers, priority-sector agenda, and tighter procedural expectations.