The 9th meeting of the Sofia Competition Forum was held on 11 November 2016 in Sofia. The general topic was “Pricing abuses of dominance in energy and telecommunications”.
The SCF is a joint initiative of UNCTAD and the Bulgarian Commission on Protection of Competition which aims to assist the competition authorities from the SCF members in enforcing their competition regimes, as well as to provide a platform for technical assistance, exchange of experience and consultations in the field of competition policy and enforcement.
In the morning plenary session moderated by Ms. Elizabeth Gachuiri from UNCTAD Competition and Consumer Protection Policies Branch the participants discussed various issues concerning pricing abuses of dominance in energy and telecommunications. There were speakers from the competition authorities of Italy (Mr. Gianluca Sepe), Russia (Ms. Elena Zaeva) and Japan (Mr. Kentaro Doi) as well as representative of the OECD Competition Division – Mr. Pedro Caro de Sousa who is also a lecturer in the University of Reading. Considering that the economic analysis is of significant importance in pricing abuse of dominance cases there were speakers from top economic consultancies – Oxera (Mr. Sumit Sharma) and Compass Lexecon (Ms. Nadine Watson). There was also a representative of the legal community – Prof. Dr. Thomas Lübbig from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer who is also Honorary Professor at Europa-Universität Viadrina.
In the afternoon the participants discussed the main topic of the meeting – pricing abuses of dominance in energy and telecommunications divided in two breakout sessions depending on the type of abuses – exclusionary and exploitative.
At the meeting the findings of the SCF project on “Comparative overview in the field of procedural fairness” were presented and endorsed. This is the third study in the series of SCF comparative studies after the general “Comparative overview of the competition regimes” and the report on “Comparative overview in the field of inspections on spot”.
At the end of the meeting the second issue of the SCF Newsletter was presented.
The presentations from the 9th SCF meeting are available at the SCF website.
You can see photos from the meeting here.
The Second issue of the SCF Newsletter is available also online here.
For more information about the Sofia Competition Forum you can visit the website of the SCF