THE THIRD ISSUE OF THE “RUSSIAN COMPETITION LAW AND ECONOMY” JOURNAL IN 2019

The issue is opened with an editorial on codification of economic rules of conduct, particular in the field of competition (Sergey Maximov, FAS, the Institute for the Study of Science, Russian Academy of Sciences).

The paper underlines the growing scale and speed of the reforms of the economic law, its internal and external inconsistency. An objective needs is formed to put “cloud” economic regulation to order; however, it cannot be fulfilled efficiently without advance mathematic modeling of law-making decisions and the practice of their enforcement. Modern digital technologies considerably decrease the experiments on “live” economy.

Konstantin Alyoshin (FAS, MGIMO University) analyses a concept of mock competition, its adverse impact upon actual competition. He criticizes normativisim in interpreting a constitutional ban of monopolization and monopolistic activity, and substantiates the importance of legislatively formalizing the ban of mock competition.

Igor Bahslakov-Nikolaev (Plekhanov Russian University of Economics) outlines the grounds and conditions of administrative liability for abusing market dominance. The author believes that to establish the dominant position, the antimonopoly authority should confirm that all necessary conditions specified directly in the Law on competition are met, rather than only the conditions determined on the basis of No. 220 FAS Order of 28.04.2010. Measures are proposed and justified to expand a preventative focus of antimonopoly regulation.

Andrey Rego (the Antimonopoly Experts Association) and Alexander Matskevich (“MTS” PJSC) look into a legal definition of the “secrecy of communications” concept and its interpretation by enforcers. The authors criticize an extensive approach to the “secrecy of communications” concept. The paper is accompanied by FAS Comments.

In view of Elena Kuznetsova and Maria Kot (Infralex Legal Firm), antimonopoly bans must not apply to the conditions directly specified in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation as necessary and (or) possible for concluding in a particular contract. The authors propose to solve the issue at the first stage through special explanations issued by FAS Presidium; at the second state – be making systemic changes to the antimonopoly law. FAS gave its comments on the paper (Artem Molchanov, Head of FAS Legal Department).

Irina Akimova and Ksenia Simakova (BGP Litigation) study a new legal mechanism extrapolating FAS powers to control foreign investments not only to economic entities of strategic importance, but also to any other Russian economic entities that, as the antimonopoly authority assesses, are of key significance for the Russian economy.

Yuri Vasin (“YurInfoR” Institute of Contemporary Education) and Tatiana Rudaya (Rostov Law University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) suggest for experts and interested enforcers to discuss a common algorithm and a mathematical (stochastic) model of countering cartels as a social-and-legal phenomenon, embedding a forecasting functionality. The authors outline possible areas for use of the models in question in order to create a system for comparative monitoring of EAEU markets.

A. Astanin (VTB Bank) describes result-oriented aspects of introducing corporate antimonopoly compliance, highlights the processes of in-house employee investigations, and gives practical advice on organizing effacing staff training.

The paper by Marina Maksinova (Law Institute, Bashkiria State University, the Antimonopoly Experts Association) focuses on the legal issues of making amendments to the conditions of public (municipal) contracts. The author reviews judicial practice to determine the criteria and grounds, under which changing the contracts conditions can be classified as an antimonopoly violation.

Olesya Muilchakova (Moscow State Law Academy) analyses approaches of foreign competition authorities to definition of product and geographic boundaries of the market, where tourism digital platform operate. The author looks into regulatory practice with regard to the policy of online-platforms for setting “broad” and “narrow” price parities.

Vitaly Pruzhansky (RBB Economics) highlighted the key economic principles applied by the European and American antimonopoly bodies to analyze whether mergers can be allowed. The specifics of the three most popular types of mergers – horizontal, vertical and conglomerate - is presented.

Sergey Belyaev and Ivan Kapitonov (Higher School of Tariff Regulation, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics) raise the issues of growing fuel prices. They suggest comparing the key macroeconomic figures in the countries with a similar level of petrol prices.

Oleg Moskvitin (Institute of Competition Policy and Market Regulation, National Research University – Higher School of Economics) and Ilya Bochinin (“Muranov, Chernikov and Partners” Law Firm) discuss some issues of establishing unified law enforcement practice, illustrating them with examples of particular decisions made by FAS Appeal Collegium.

The III issue of the Journal includes a quarterly academic review of the most significant decisions of FAS Appeal Collegium. The readers can learn about the decisions made in Q2 2019.

The issue is prepared with involvement of the Antimonopoly Experts Association.