Andrey Tsyganov: violation prevention and preventative control remain the main task of the antimonopoly bodies

On 21 June 2016, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsyganov took part in a workshop on exchanging the best practices to improve control and supervision. The workshop was organized by the Analytical Centre at the Government of the Russian Federation.

Andrey Tsyganov discussed the practice of improving control and supervision under the frame of the Law “On Protection of Competition”.

He stated that in the past ten years the scope of applying the antimonopoly standard has been continuously reducing and administrative barriers are being minimized.

As an example, Deputy Head of FAS highlighted control over economic concentration: “According to the statistical data, in 2007 we considered 6000 pre-merger notifications and 44,000 post-merger notifications, while in 2015 the figures were 1793 and 165 accordingly.

The trend, in his opinion, is related, particularly, to introducing the novelties of the “forth package” of amendments to the antimonopoly law that came into force in January 2015. For instance, an electronic form of filing notifications is introduced and there is a possibility to discuss transactions in advance with the antimonopoly authority. Application of warnings is extended to fixing different prices, creating discriminatory conditions, unfair competition and violations by the authorities.

Another novelty is complete abolishing of the Register of economic entities with over 35% market share. It already cut down the number of cases investigated by FAS from 11,276 in 2011 to 9092 in 2015.

“Preventative control over violations of the antimonopoly law remains the major objective of the antimonopoly bodies, directly specified in the Law “On Protection of Competition” (Clause 3 Article22)”, pointed out Andrey Tsyganov. He outlined seven main methods to prevent violations:

-         Serious punishment for violating the antimonopoly law

-         Warnings and admonitions

-         Explanations on the antimonopoly law

-         Administrative leniency

-         Mitigating and aggravating circumstances

-         Competition advocacy

-         Antimonopoly compliance.

Regarding competition advocacy and FAS openness policy, Andrey Tsyganov said that here the efforts target different “stakeholders” groups: the authorities, Courts, business community, general public. He emphasized: “We must explain to people what we do and why. It can be done through the web-sites of FAS and its regional Offices, as well as social media, in most of which we are present. Every year we draft a report on the state of competition, factoring in the opinions of all major NGOs and businessmen. FAS also has around 30 Public Advisory and Expert Councils. On these and many others indicators FAS is one of the most open bodies and we are very proud of it”.