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Pilot project to share experience of more experienced competition agencies with newer competition AG

14.12.2005

The ICN has approved a pilot program that seeks to facilitate contacts between competition agencies in order to make the expertise of more experienced ICN members more readily available to less experienced agencies. Despite differences in jurisdictions\' legal systems, the issues encountered by competition agencies are strikingly similar across jurisdictions, such as definition of relevant markets, identification of barriers to entry, efficiencies, assessment of conduct on competition, and so forth. The program will make it easier for competition agencies to access the experience of others.

The program is simultaneously exploring two basic models for sharing experience with newer agencies:: a partnership model, and a consultation model. The pilot program runs through the annual conference in Moscow in June, 2007. The future of the program will be determined following an evaluation.

Partnership Model

The first model, referred to as the partnership model, pairs more experienced agencies with less experienced ones. For the partnership model, three to four pairs of experienced and newer agencies have agreed to establish regular contacts and to facilitate inquiries between each other. Each pair of agencies will work together to establish a scope of assistance and avenues of communication that work best for them. It is hoped that the relationships will be flexible, informal ones that are not excessively burdened with procedural requirements. For the purpose of the pilot test, partnership groups have been formed in a manner consistent, to the extent feasible, with the principle that technical assistance is more likely to be effective if the recipient agency has significant control over the process. While the pilot project is due to conclude in June, 2007, relationships or initiatives that are ongoing past this date may continue if the agencies involved agree. An agency\'s participation in a partnership of this sort will not in any way precludes it from seeking or receiving advice from another agency.

Paired agencies participating in the partnership model include the Japan Fair Trade Commission and Indonesia\'s KPPU; the European Commission and Armenia\'s State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition; France\'s Directorate General of Competition, Consumption and the Repression of Frauds and Tunisia\'s Department of Competition and Economic Surveys; Germany\'s Bundeskartellamt and the Mongolian Unfair Competition Monitoring Agency; and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Barbados Fair Trading Commission.

Consultation Model

Under the second model, referred to as the consultation model, several ICN members have volunteered to participate by making themselves available, within limits they define, to consult with less experienced agencies. For the pilot program, the initial consulting agencies are the Canadian Competition Bureau, the French DGCCRF, the German Bundeskartellamt, the Hungarian Competition Agency, the South African Competition Commission, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Each agency has drafted a short synopsis of the type of assistance it can offer. The ICN web site, at http://www.internationalcompetitionnetwork.org/cpi/ConsultIndex.htm, indexes these summaries by particular subject areas that might be subjects of consultation. Any competition agency may choose to contact any participating consulting agency. Each participating consulting agency has designated a point of contact who will route all requests to an appropriate expert within the agency and establish a direct contact between the staffs of the two agencies. All consultation is on a confidential basis consistent with the jurisdiction\'s confidentiality rules.

Identification of a contact person should in no way discourage competition agency staff members from contacting other individuals at another agency – the program is intended to supplement, not replace, other channels of communication.

Under both models, the program will seek to facilitate informal individual-to-individual contact, using agency-to-agency mechanisms to facilitate this contact. More experienced agencies will use the mechanism to make their willingness to be consulted known and will commit to making their experts available for informal consultation.

Evaluation

A preliminary evaluation was conducted for the Annual Conference in Cape Town in May, 2006. As a condition of participation in the pilot test, each ICN member agency agrees to participate in an evaluation of how the program has worked. In the case of the consultation model, the consulted agency’s contact person will keep track of the requests that have been made in order that the consulting agency can be identified and its views on the success of the consultation ascertained (while maintaining the substance of the consultation itself in confidence, unless both parties agree otherwise during the evaluation process). In the case of the partnership model, the Subgroup on Effective Technical Assistance will select one or more members who are not part of the pilot test to evaluate the program based on the partners’ reports on their experiences with the program. While the views of all participants will be important, special emphasis will be placed on the views of the less experienced agencies, for whose benefit the program is being developed.

Questions about the pilot project may be directed to the Co-chairs of the Subgroup on Effective Technical Assistance:

Russell Damtoft, United States Federal Trade Commission

Aini Proos, Estonian Competition Board

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