OREANDA-NEWS. October 14, 2014. The Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Igor Artemiev, was the key speaker at the VI Annual Conference on “Antimonopoly Regulation in Russia” organized by the “Vedomosti” newspaper.

First, the Head of FAS thanked the expert community for considerable contribution in developing antimonopoly regulation in Russia and stressed that the Conference is one of important platforms where the antimonopoly authority sums up the results of its annual efforts.

As the most high profile events in 2014 he emphasized adopting the “forth antimonopoly package” by the Government. Commenting on the novelties in the draft law, Igor Artemiev pointed out that “the key amendment is introducing a mechanism of inner appeal procedures. This is a request from business that shall considerably relieve the burden from Courts”.

He also informed the audience that the Government is given the right to determine the Rules for non-discriminatory access to the goods on highly concentrated markets where there are violations of the antimonopoly law. “This norm raised a storm of discussions. It must be pointed out, however, that it does not cover holders of natural monopolies and is devised to prevent the so-called “Pikalyovo syndrome” for the monopolists with over 75% market share that are tied up with rigid production chains”. He added that FAS is prepared to work on the wordings with business.

Igor Artemiev reminded that with introduction of the institutions of warnings FAS is being transformed from a punitive into a preventative body: “Today 70-75% of our warnings are executed. It enables to solve the problem quickly, efficiently, without Courts and fines. Unfortunately, a bad practice of challenging warnings is being formed, which gives us a reason to think whether it is necessary”.

He also pointed out that to continue economic reforms it is necessary to abolish the Law on natural monopolies, replacing it with an up-dated Chapter in the Law on competition.

Discussing unacceptable practices of unfair competition, the Head of FAS emphasized that “together with experts we verified the wording of the amendments to Article 14 of the Law “On Protection of Competition” and we start the official coordinating procedure”. He also thanked Non-Profit Partnership for Competition Support for their work on the new version of Article 14.

“After the federal laws, the Rules for non-discriminatory access (RNDA) are the most important by-laws”, stated Igor Artemiev. “We hope that by the end of the year new RNDA will be approved and the existing RNDA will be amended –railways, sea and river ports, aviation; infrastructure used to render telecommunications services and owned by holders of natural monopolies, electric power transmission, postal services.

He also pointed out that in the near future the procedure for administrative appeals in construction will be discussed in the second reading. It will enable considering complaints against violations by the authorities in urban development within 7 working days and introduces administrative liability of officials for violations in this filed.

Discussing the future plans, the Head of the antimonopoly authority emphasized that it is necessary to ensure that physical persons injured by antimonopoly violations should be able to claim damages. “There should be an alternative mechanism for calculating damages under Court judgments from 1% to 15% of the costs of goods purchased with violations”, pointed out the Head of FAS. He added that FAS is prepared to improve this formula and suggested to the expert community to discuss the issue.

He reported on the instructions to ensure efficient pricing control on the markets of defence products as some functions of Rosoboronzakaz are transferred to FAS: “We must do everything possible for the devfence and security of our country. For us there will be no difference between violations in the course of competitive bidding for civilian products and defence products and practically all approaches to public procurement will be transferred to public defence procurement”.

The Head of FAS informed about an initiative for public sales of the property of state-run companies on torgi.gov.ru, similarly to the state property already sold through this web-site.

Igor Artemiev said that legalizing parallel import is one of the areas of further efforts.

Summing up, Igor Artemiev stated: “FAS will move forward from the number of cases to their quality. FAS endeavours to combine in its practice Russian cases and international cooperation and achieve top results by skills rather than numbers”. Addressing the expert audience he added: “We are the smallest network executive body in Russia, but thanks to your brains, skills and support we feel that there are many more of us”.