OREANDA-NEWS. January 30, 2012. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) proposed to Italy’s competition authority (Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) to sign a new type of a Memorandum of Understanding. This proposal was put forward during a recent visit of FAS delegation to Rome, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The visit took place under the framework of a current Memorandum of Understanding signed between FAS Russia and Italy’s competition authority. The delegation was led by Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy. Other members of the delegation included the Head of FAS Department for International Economic Cooperation, Lesya Davydova, and Deputy Head of the International Projects Division, Alexandera Turbina.

On 19th January 2012, Russian representatives had a meeting with the Head of Italy’s competition authority, Giovanni Pitruzzella. The General Secretary, Roberto Chieppa, and a Commissioner, Salvatore Rebecchini, also took part in the meeting.

The parties informed each other about the main areas of work of both agencies, their functions, scope of reference and structure, and discussed the major tasks in the field of competition enforcement in Russia and Italy.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy informed Italian colleagues about the latest changes in Russian antimonopoly law (“the third antimonopoly package”). The parties also discussed the prospects of bilateral cooperation; in particular, possibility of transition to practical cooperation between the competition authorities in terms of joint investigations of violations of competition law as well as transactions on cross-border markets. The parties determined the issues that would be of mutual interest for joint investigations by a recently formed Working Group on the issues of competition on the pharmaceutical market.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy proposed that FAS Russia and Italy’s competition authority signed a so-called Memorandum of Understanding of a new type. In 2011 FAS signed similar Memorandums with Austria’s and Spain’s competition authorities. The Agreements enable transition to a fundamentally new level of cooperation between competition authorities in antimonopoly enforcement: exchanging information, coordinating efforts, jointly investigating markets.

The parties expressed their hopes that the meeting would lay foundation of even more effective and productive cooperation between two authorities in the field of competition.