ECN Brief

Commission welcomes provisional political agreement reached by European Parliament and Council on new rules to make national competition authorities even more effective enforcers

The European Commission welcomes the provisional political agreement reached on 30 May 2018 by the European Parliament and the Council on the Commission proposal of March 2017 for a Directive to make Member States' competition authorities even more effective enforcers of EU antitrust rules. The Directive intends to further empower the national competition authorities by providing them with appropriate enforcement tools, to bring about a genuine common competition enforcement area.

Commissioner in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said: "EU antitrust rules make markets work better for European consumers and businesses, giving them more choice and better prices. Member States' competition authorities and the Commission work together hand in hand to enforce these rules across the EU. This Directive will give national competition authorities effective tools and make sure they have the resources necessary to detect and sanction companies that break EU competition rules. It will also ensure that they can take their decisions in full independence, based on the facts and the law. I would like to thank the European Parliament – especially the Rapporteur Andreas Schwab and the shadow rapporteurs – and the Bulgarian, Estonian and Maltese Presidencies for their commendable work on this file."

The new rules will make sure that national competition authorities will:

  • Act independently when enforcing EU antitrust rules and work in a fully impartial manner;

  • Have the necessary financial and human resources to do their work;

  • Have all the powers needed to gather relevant evidence;

  • Have adequate tools to impose proportionate and deterrent sanctions for breaches of EU antitrust rules; and

  • Have coordinated leniency programmes which encourage companies to come forward with evidence of illegal cartels.

The legal text still needs to be formally approved by the European Parliament and Council, which is expected by the end of 2018.

 

Background

On 22 March 2017, the European Commission proposed new rules to enable Member States' competition authorities to be more effective enforcers of EU antitrust rules. By ensuring that national competition authorities can act effectively, the Commission's proposal aims to contribute to the objective of a genuine Single Market, promoting the overall goal of competitive markets, jobs and growth. This proposal followed a public consultation, which the Commission carried out between November 2015 and February 2016.

Posted on 04/06/2018

Annual Conference of the International Competition Network in New Delhi

The 17th Annual Conference of the International Competition Network (ICN) was hosted by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and concluded Friday March 23, 2018. Nearly 500 participants from more than 70 jurisdictions, including representatives and stakeholders such as the business community, legal and economic professionals, international organisations and academics attended this year's conference which started on Wednesday, March 21, 2018, in New Delhi, India.

The ICN is the most important network of competition authorities worldwide. It comprises 138 competition agencies from 125 jurisdictions. Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt, has been the ICN Steering Group Chair since September 2013.

In his opening speech Andreas Mundt stated "The ICN is a success story. The familiarity and trust that we have built in the ICN are important, especially today. We have a common interest: competition first and consumers first, not only in our country, but worldwide.”

At the Annual Conference, last year's work products were approved, including guiding principles on procedural fairness and a new annotated guidance document on investigative process, updated and expanded recommended practices on cooperation in merger control, timing of notifications and review periods and an interim report on key elements for efficient and effective leniency programmes. The ICN work also covered vertical mergers, market studies and advocacy strategies.

All work products are available at the conference website. In addition, the ICN presented its new website which will be online soon.

The Annual Conference once more provided an opportunity for members and other stakeholders to have in-depth discussions about existing work products and future topics. The ICN provides one of the most important forums for experience sharing and an informal venue for maintaining regular contacts to address practical competition concerns.

The 2019 ICN Annual Conference will be held in Colombia, hosted by the Colombian Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio.

Posted on 23/05/2018

Bundeskartellamt celebrates 60th Anniversary with festive ceremony

On 22 February 2018 the Bundeskartellamt celebrated its 60th Anniversary with a festive ceremony held in Bonn. On 1 January 1958 the German Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB) came into force and the Bundeskartellamt, then still in Berlin, began its work with 53 staff. Around 500 guests were invited to participate to the ceremony in the former plenary hall of the German Bundestag at the World Conference Center Bonn. These include representatives from politics, international competition authorities, the courts, the business sector and academia.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: "In the last 60 years the Bundeskartellamt has undergone constant change, progressively refining its toolbox to protect competition. In 1958 the Bundeskartellamt took up the prosecution of cartels and abuse of market power. Since 1973 it has also examined mergers. In 1999 it gained competences in the area of public procurement law. Since 2017 the authority can also carry out sector inquiries into consumer protection issues. The Bundeskartellamt has always proved to be a very agile authority which is able to overcome even great changes."

The speakers at this event were Brigitte Zypries, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Bettina Limperg, President of the German Federal Court of Justice, and Professor Dieter Kempf, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI).

In a double interview with the Director-General for Competition of the European Commission, Johannes Laitenberger, and the President of the Bundeskartellamt, Andreas Mundt, the publisher
of the German daily FAZ, Holger Steltzner, discussed the topic: "Competition, consumers, jobs – Who or what do competition authorities protect?"

A panel discussion was moderated by the Vice President of the Bundeskartellamt, Professor Konrad Ost, on the theme: "Competition policy in a globalized and digitalized world – Challenges of today and tomorrow"“. The panelists were Makan Delrahim, Assistant Attorney General at the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, Dr Frank Montag, Chairman of the Competition Lawyers' Association, Isabelle de Silva, President of the French Autorité de la concurrence, and Professor Achim Wambach, Chairman of the Monopolies Commission.

You will find further information on the Bundeskartellamt's history in the authority's press release of 2 January 2018.

Posted on 06/03/2018

Call for proposals for training national judges in EU competition law

06 February 2018

The Commission has published its call for proposals for training national judges in competition law. The purpose is to co-finance projects aimed at improving the knowledge, application and interpretation of EU competition law and further developing legal linguistic skills. Priority topics include application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, the Directive 2014/104 on antitrust damages actions, economic principles of competition law, competition law in regulated industries, State Aid and development of legal linguistic skills. Preference will be given to projects offering training courses with consecutive levels, complementarity or an innovative approach compared to existing offers, and projects addressing judges from several member states in their training courses, thus encouraging cross-border networking.

Please take note of the terms and conditions in more detail Go to call for proposals

The deadline for applications is 16 April 2018.

 

Posted on 06/02/2018

20th anniversary of the Croatian Competition Agency

On 15 October 2017 the Croatian Competition Agency marked twenty years of its operation by organizing an international conference in Zagreb that was visited by more than a hundred experts, judges, attorneys and representatives of academia and business community who took part in the fruitful discussion about the work of the CCA, judicial review of its decisions and challenges in the future.

There were two panel discussions at the conference. The first focused on the past experience and future challenges facing the CCA in the implementation of competition rules, whereas the second panel discussion concentrated on the functioning of the judicial review.  In spite of scarce financial and limited human capacities for twenty years the Croatian Competition Agency (CCA) has played a central role in the enforcement of competition rules and creation of competition culture in the Croatian society.

Until the end of 2016, that is to say, in the last nineteen years, the CCA solved a total of 7,588 cases, where 2,237 of them were administrative proceedings. It adopted 449 decisions on regulatory provisions and their compliance with competition rules. It has been estimated that the number of cases solved in 2017 would be pretty much the same as in 2016. Thus, we may say that the CCA solved more than 8,000 cases in twenty years. It has done so with less than 50 employees and the budget of less than HRK 10 million that is not flexible and does not encourage any developments.

 In the period from 2012 – 2015, that is to say, in only three years, the CCA imposed HRK 26 million sanctions, some HRK 20 million of which have already been payed to the State Budget. Day after the international conference in the premises of the Agency a workshop was held by Ms. Despina Pachnou from OECD, on the topic of fighting bid rigging. Also, later that day a bilateral meeting occurred in the premises of the Agency with Mr. Ivo Jerkić, president of Competition Council of Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Posted on 22/12/2017