OREANDA-NEWS. June 23, 2014. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) has been able to improve its position in the Rating Enforcement published by a leading international publisher - Global Competition Review (GCR), which is recognized across the entire global community. As GCR stated, if the positive trend continues, FAS is in line to the top rating.

The Rating is based on independent expert evaluation by representatives of foreign legal and business communities in accordance with the criteria devised by GCR.

Evaluation is made under a five-point grading scale with breakdown of competition authorities by the number of scores (stars) into the following groups: Elite, Very Good, Good, and Fair.

For the first time, GCR evaluated the work of Russian antimonopoly authority in 2006 after the “first antimonopoly package” had been adopted. At that time the very fact of being included in the Rating was already a significant success. Overall, there are about 120 antimonopoly authorities in the world. However, only countries with harmonized antimonopoly law that comply with OECD best practices are included in the Rating - only one forth of competition authorities across the world.

FAS has been consistently improving its position since 2006.

FAS efforts in 2013 was given three stars – “Good”, sharing the position with the competition authorities from such advanced countries as Austria, Norway, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and South Africa. GCR marked positive development in FAS performance by an “upward arrow” in comparison with the previous period, describing that:

Recently the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation achieved significant success in economic policy. In ten years, since the antimonopoly authority was formed FAS became a large player on the global stage of antimonopoly enforcement and a partner in complex international investigations, the number of which is increasing.

Experts also point out that in spite of a considerable load of cases investigated by FAS (related not only to excessive enforcement but also to the broad powers assigned to FAS), the antimonopoly authority pays increasingly more attention to big infrastructure companies, especially with State participation.

GCR thinks that in the country which sometimes demonstrates mentality inherited from the planned economy, such scope of work for the competition regulator will be preserved for a rather long time. According to GCR and OECD experts, FAS has possibilities to overcome excessive government control in some sectors of the economy.

In 2013 GCR stated that undoubtedly FAS had been able to convince skeptics in business, politics and the general public that economy based on competitive market is better for Russia.

Therefore, FAS enforcement practice is consistently improving. GCR summed up that if the positive trend continues, Russian antimonopoly authority has all chances to be included in the group of competition authorities with top ranking.