FAS AND HIGH SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS CREATED BRICS ANTIMONOPOLY CENTRE

It will become an interstate platform for joint antimonopoly investigations of global companies and markets by BRICS

BRICS Antimonopoly Centre is formed as part of HSE-Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development. Its main mission is to devise approaches and recommendations on competition protection policy that reflects BRICS interests amidst rapid technological development and globalization.

Creating such Centre is a long pending issue for solving conceptual problem of antitrust. Current theories and practices of antimonopoly law in developed western countries do not correlate with the key problems in BRICS, including economic inequality, protection of public interests, and access to modern technologies.

An essential task at the first stage will be shaping and reinforcing confident relations between antimonopoly communities of experts and practitioners form BRICS countries.

“Scholars from different countries will be working here. The Centre will become intellectual expert platform for devising recommendations and supporting projects important for competition authorities”, commented Head of FAS Department for International Economic Cooperation, Lesya Davydova.

“At the moment the Centre puts an emphasis academic and expert work. Our ambitions, however, are to convert it in the format of an international organization for cooperation between antimonopoly authorities of BRICS states.  The Centre will form an Academic Council comprising internationally renowned scholars and an Advisory Council of representatives of the antimonopoly bodies of BRICS countries”, added Alexei Ivanov, Director of HSE-Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development, Director of BRICS Antimonopoly Centre.

In 2019, Russia will host the VI BRICS Conference and in 2020 Russia chairs BRICS.

“The Conference promises to be very interesting and large-scale. It marks 10 years of BRICS collaboration. It is expected that participants will come not only form BRICS but also from Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa, the CIS and the Eurasian Economic Union, influential international organizations and integrations such as OECD, UNCTAD and the EU”, said Lesya Davydova.

A high-quality platform for BRICS collaboration in the antimonopoly field will help BRICS competition authorities to further consolidate their efforts aimed at producing timely and modern response to the challenges of the “digital economy”.

Creating such organization will be an important substantive element of Russia chairing BRICS in 2020.