The 45th ICAP session took place in the Moscow region

On 27 September 2016,the 45^th session of the Interstate Council on Antimonopoly Policy took place in the Moscow regionunder the frame of the International Event “The Russian Competition Week”.

In April 2016, the Council Chairman became the Head of the State Commission for protection of Economic Competition of the Republic of Armenia, Artak Shaboyan.

Representatives of the competition authorities of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Moldova, Russia Tajikistan as well as the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), Non-Profit Partnership “For Competition Support in the CIS” and the Association of Antimonopoly Experts traditionally took part in the event.

The welcoming address was given by the Head of FAS Igor Artemiev. He pointed out that with every session ICAP sees progress in solving tasks at the multilateral basis. He called up, however, not to rest on one’s oars and continue setting up top tasks to achieve the common goal.

He congratulated the audience with the 10^th anniversary of establishing the Headquarters for Joint Investigations of the Violations of the Antimonopoly Legislation in the CIS Countries (the Headquarters). According to Igor Artemiev, the work under his format enables analyzing the best and bad practices.

Then the Head of FAS highlighted the markets with difficult conditions for competition development: telecommunications, fertilizers, fuel-and-energy complex, and food products. “We will watch carefully transnational corporations that come to our countries with unlawful actions”, stated the Head of Russian competition authority.

He asked all CIS competition authorities to combine the efforts to have joint investigations against companies with bad practices.

Then ICAP members discussed in detail the most noticeable events in the field of antimonopoly policy in the period between the Council meetings.

For instance, the Head of FAS Department for International Economic Cooperation, Lesya Davydova, talked about the St Petersburg International Legal Forum that took place in May 2016. The Forum is one of the most efficient discussion platforms on elaborating common approaches to competition law development under the conditions of globalization.

“For already the third year in a row, FAS organized Round Tables and sessions at the Competition Week in Russia to discuss competition policy issues”, added Lesya Davydova.

She put special emphasis on signing the Memorandum of Understanding in the field of competition law and policy in BRICS countries. The Memorandum reflects a possibility of creating a Working Group that will devise particular mechanisms on improving the competition conditions in the socially important sectors of the BRICS economy.

Participants also touched a completely new issue for the Council: antimonopoly regulation on IT-markets. Deputy Head of FAS Alexei Dotsenko discussed cases in practice of Russian competition authority.

He highlighted the specifics of the case against Google. The FAS Commission established that Google provided Google Play application store for mobile devices vendors to be pre-installed on such devices with ОС Android intended for circulation in the Russian Federation. The conditions for providing an application store included mandatory pre-installment of Google applications as well as the search system and their mandatory placement in the priority position on the main device screen.

Such actions by Google led to prohibition of pre-installing applications from other vendors.

“The Court of First Instance and the Appeal Court confirmed legitimacy of the FAS decision. The company is fined over 438 million RUB”, reminded Alexei Dotsenko.

Also at the jubilee session FAS and the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade of the Republic of Belarus signed a Memorandum on Cooperation.

The Head of the CIS Headquarters, Deputy Head of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin, presented proposals on concluding a Memorandum on Cooperation with the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications.

He pointed out that recently development of informational and communications technologies (ICT) has become a very important factor influencing all global economic processes.

“Understanding the global and objective nature of digitalization development, it is necessary to devise a system-wide legal strategy that would encourage competition development on the markets and strengthen competitive ability of economies, particularly, describing specialized procedures”, emphasized Anatoly Golomolzin.

He explained that to achieve national competitiveness it is essential to be aware that all process on introducing digital economy, including standardization, must be carried out in a robust manner: actively devise and adopt at the international level the standards that would determine national companies as global players rather than simply accept the already established standards.

“Undoubtedly, combining efforts of the CIS states in the areas influencing digital economy will enable to employ such opportunities for the CIS population in the best way”, summed up Deputy Head of FAS.

Participants decided that the next ICAP meeting will take place in Moldova in spring 2017.