OREANDA-NEWS. On March 17, 2009 there was held a one and a half hour teleseminar for the ICN competition authorities within the activity of the ICN Working Group on Competition Advocacy, co-chair of which is the FAS Russia, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The main speaker of the Teleseminar was the Head of the Russian competition authority Igor Artemyev reporting on Striking a Balance between Competition Advocacy and Enforcement Activity in Solving Current Challenges to Promoting Competition in Russia. The Teleseminar participants were highly interested in the FAS Russia experience on observance by the public entities of the competition supporting principles, on prevention of competition law violations by the state authorities, on law-drafting initiatives of the FAS Russia aimed at enhancement of anti-cartel activity effectiveness.

Moreover Igor Artemyev focused on problems of exchange trade usage as a tool to ensure competitive price setting in a number of the sectors of the Russian economy, on provision fair access of consumers to the services of natural monopolies, as well as peculiarities of the FAS Russia activity during the global financial crisis. Having finished with the report, the head of the FAS Russia replied on numerous questions of the Teleseminar participants, the majority of whom expressed their interest in using the FAS Russia experience in their activity.

According to the joint decision of the ICN and FAS Russia authorities the Russian competition authority is a coordinator of the implementation of the ICN project on advocacy. In particular, the project envisages provision to the ICN of recommendations on its further activity in the sphere of disseminating its foremost experience on competition advocacy, as well as holding of a number of telephone conferences on exchange of the accumulated experience.