OREANDA-NEWS. September 23, 2013. The key theme at the Plenary Session of an international event - Russian Competition Day on 10th September 2013 was developing cooperation between antimonopoly authorities.

One of the first foreign speakers who raised this issue was John Davies, the Head of OECD Competition Department who gave a presentation about “Global Integration and International investigations”.

According to Mr Davies, on the one hand there is a positive trend. Since 2007 the overall number of cross-border cases has been increasing, which shows cooperation between antimonopoly authorities. On the other hand, such practice has generated new problems. For instance, in 2001 US antimonopoly authorities approved a merger between General Electric and Honeywell. Their European colleagues, however, refused to approve the merger. The US government through that the decision made by Europeans was politicized. Next significant conflict emerged in 2013 between the antimonopoly bodies of France and the UK. The UK Competition Council refused to approve acquisition of a ferry operator SeaFrance by EuroTunnel, which French competition authority approved in November 2012.

“Governments must take into consideration increasingly international competition enforcement. Wonderful if it happens before the next conflict similar to General Electric and Honeywell, EuroTunnel and SeaFrance”, summed up John Davies.

The Head of UNCTAD competition branch Hassan Qaqaya also concentrated on the issues of cooperation between antimonopoly bodies in cross-border transactions: “The outreach of competition law is limited by national borders which creates certain difficulties in investigation of international cases when large-scale cooperation and mutual understanding is required. To achieve this, it is necessary to understand not only national antimonopoly law but also competition law of other countries <…> and also learn from each other”.

Viorica Carare, who chairs the Competition Council of the Republic of Moldova, also spoke in favour of a supranational body to support cooperation between countries in the field of competition: “The first attempt to create a supranational body was by WTO in 1948; then there were two more attempts by the UN and WTO but also to no avail. In my opinion, such body does not до сих пор ни в одном направлении<…> Everything in the world is being globalized, but the antimonopoly bodies continue working within the national frameworks <…> However, we now understand what we need so we’ll find a solution”.

Dag Johansson, Policy Co-ordinator, International Relations Unit, Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission, said that 30 - 50% of significant cases investigated recently by the Commission involved international cooperation: “different agencies can possess different pieces of the puzzle”. Therefore it is necessary to develop cooperation and interact with competition authorities form different jurisdictions. To develop such cooperation the European Commission, for instance, organizes trainings for experts from competition authorities of other countries for the period of up to six months.

Dag Johansson also informed the plenary session on signing a “2nd Generation Agreement” with Switzerland, which enables exchanging confidential information albeit under strict rules. At the moment the European Commission is negotiating such an agreement with Canada.

At the end of the plenary session the Head of ICAP Secretariat Azim Usmanov discussed cooperation between competition authorities of the CIS member-states, including the Headquarters for Joint Investigations. “If until recently we (CIS antimonopoly bodies) had long learned from our western colleagues, now they can also learn something from us!”, emphasized Mr. Usmanov.