OREANDA-NEWS. May 07, 2013. Approximating approaches to control over economic concentration is one of the main condition for developing business within the Common Economic Space. Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) Andrey Tsyganov made this statement at an International Research-to-Practice Conference that took place in Minsk on 25-26 April 2013 to discuss the draft Model Competition Law.

The purpose of the Conference was to discuss the draft Model Competition Law with the general public due to a special importance of this legislative act aimed at approximating legal regulation of relations in the field of competition policy.

Representatives of the antimonopoly bodies, business-communities, executive bodies and academia from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia took part in the Conference.

Addressing the conference, Andrey Tsyganov highlighted the issues of control over economic concentration that must be reflected in the Model Law. In particular, Deputy Head of FAS discussed the main approaches used to form the system of control over economic concentration within the Common Economic Space. According to Andrey Tsyganov, there should be no excessive burden on business and the antimonopoly authority; therefore, the antimonopoly control should only be applied to the transactions or other actions that can truly affect competition. To this purpose it is necessary to fix adequate threshold values of the total asset value, the total revenue, etc., that determine the need to approve transactions or other actions with the antimonopoly body.

As an example, Andrey Tsyganov discussed the results of FAS efforts to control economic concentration: “In 2012 the overall number of considered petitions and accepted notifications reduced nearly twofold in comparison with 2011 due to threefold reduction of submitted notifications. In 4 years the total number reduced from 49909 to 4437 – by more than 11 times, which considerably reduced administrative burden upon both business and FAS Russia”.

Andrey Tsyganov also discussed the mechanism of waivers, widely used by foreign competition authorities, particularly considering transactions that can affect competition on the markets of several countries.

“Waiver is a mechanism when a company that is under investigation by an antimonopoly authority must confirm confidentiality refusal and its consent for consultations with the antimonopoly authorities, one of which already possesses information required by the other”, commented Andrey Tsyganov. “An absolute advantage of this mechanism is reducing time and labour costs of an antimonopoly body due to obtaining the necessary information and through consultative assistance. FAS already had a positive experience of applying this mechanism in cooperation with the European Commission, as well as with our colleagues from the CIS. We hope this experience will be useful in cooperation between antimonopoly authorities of the member-states of the Customs Union”.