OREANDA-NEWS. September 18, 2014. “Competition Day in Russia” is a platform for exchanging the leading world practices. For instance, representatives of competition authorities and organizations from different countries across the globe delivered reports at the plenary session in St Petersburg.

General Director of Austria’s Federal Competition Authority, Theodor Thanner, discussed modern aspects of competition policy. He pointed out that competition, first of all, is beneficial to consumers. “Thanks to developed competition, product prices are reduced and quality improves through new innovative technologies”.

If companies attempt to restrict competition, to maintain correct market performance antimonopoly bodies must prevent and sometimes correct such conduct. It includes suppressing anticompetitive agreements and abusing dominance.

To attain more efficient results, competition authorities of different countries must cooperate with each other. Theodor Thanner gave an example of the telecommunications market that at the moment is in the focus of attention of Austria’s Competition Authority and the Roaming Working Group, co-chaired by FAS and Turkey’s competition authority.

The Head of UNCTAD Competition and Consumer Policies Branch, Hassan Qaqaya, talked about independence and accountability of competition authorities.

He said that an antimonopoly body must be free from political or business impact. At the same time no competition authority can be fully free for the Government. There are several models of accountability of competition authority but it depends on numerous factors, particularly, political-and-administrative, legal and social-and-economic context. “In this case, for majority of countries it is difficult to achieve the best balance between autonomy and control”, emphasized Hassan Qaqaya.