OREANDA-NEWS. June 26, 2012. The Headquarters for Joint Investigations of Violations of the Antimonopoly Law of CIS Member-States held its 20th session in Baku, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia. 

Attendees included representatives of antimonopoly bodies of the CIS member-states, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, CIS Executive Committee, CIS Advisory Council for Consumer Rights, Eurasian Economic Commission, and “Promoting Competition in the CIS Member-States” Non-Commercial Partnership.

Participants discussed some issues of liberalizing agreements on air transportation between the CIS Member-States, developing a draft Model agreement on air transportation between the CIS countries that are being drafted by CIS antimonopoly bodies and transport ministries in accordance with the decisions of the Council of Heads of CIS Government.

In view of developing a Single Economic Space of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia (SES), devising and adopting an “open-skies” agreement by SES member-states becomes especially important. The agreement allows other CIS member-states to join.

The Headquarters made decisions to intensify efforts towards these directions and devises the action plan to be completed at the end 2012.

The Headquarters also discussed developing competition on telecommunications markets in the CIS member-states. CIS antimonopoly bodies evaluated the results of their efforts towards reducing roaming prices in different CIS countries and further directions for coordinating joint work for advancing competition on the markets communications services with use of roaming. The parties also discussed changes in this field in the countries of the European Union.

Lately the issue of network neutrality has become of especially pressing in this field. One of its objectives is to ensure the balance of interests of Internet users, providers of various content categories and providers of communications services.

The Headquarters proposed to CIS antimonopoly bodies to make this a priority of their work for the near future, setting the task to research laws of CIS countries on communications in order to develop a model for regulating network neutrality.

The Headquarters discussed developing competition on pharmaceuticals markets. Taking into account special social importance of these markets, the Headquarters will conduct a full-scale survey. For this purpose, the Headquarters approved the survey plan and made several organizational and technical decisions.

The Headquarters also proposed that in the near future ICAP should give priority to scrutinizing the markets of electric power and grain.