ANDREY TSARIKOVSKIY: IS ANTITRUST A UNIVERSAL RESPONSE TO ECONOMIC CHALLENGES?

This idea is proposed byStats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS to the global community for consideration

“Competition law embeds more than a mere description of phenomena and actions – it states the core principle, on which the law in based in general: the principle of justice”, said Andrey Tsarikovskiy at FAS plenary session during Petersburg International Legal Forum.

At the “Digital economy – new challenges, new solutions” on 16 May 2019 representatives of antimonopoly authorities from different countries, experts and members of academic discussed possible “answers” to the challenges of the modern economy, and whether competition law can become one of them.

“We live in the epoch of the forth industrial evolution, and each such revolution changed the economic world view”, started his speech Andrey Tsarikovskiy.

He pointed out that structural transformations in the economy are getting increasingly more rapid and have a significant effect upon all spheres: the “technological uncertainty” is increasing, the basic economic concepts, principles and event configurations of entire markets are changed.

“Earlier antimonopoly regulation of digital sphere implied control over digital giants; now all markets have become digital. Information technologies are just the tip of an iceberg. So if we do not change the regulatory principles, we will not be able to control any of the markets”, stated Deputy Head of FAS.

The speaker highlighted that “hyper-globalization” has led to a sharp increase of unreality and unprecedented concentration of capital in the hands of a small group of companies.

He explained that “in response, regional legislation emerged as an attempt to turn back the tide of globalization due to inability to regulate global processes at the national level”.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy added that traditional tools of antimonopoly regulation do not work any longer, while new markets appear and disappear faster than such tools can be applied:

“We often can’t be fast enough to work out mechanisms of antimonopoly regulation, when the phenomenon in question has already gone. The speed of emergence and disappearance of new economic phenomena is higher than the law-making cycle”.

Deputy Head of FAS reminded that the Antimonopoly Service has drafted the “fifth antimonopoly package” that modifies the law to be operational in the digital epoch, and stressed that “every delay in adopting it costs a lot because the realities are changing fast, new factors emerge that we need to account for in the law”.

Finally, Andrey Tsarikovskiy pointed out that non-specificity and generalization, which used to be shortcomings of antimonopoly regulation, “have suddenly become a plus for regulation in the modern era as it can give a quick answer to the challenges of today”.

In conclusion, Andrey Tsarikovskiyconcluded: “Competition law returns us to the origins, because it embeds more than a mere description of phenomena and actions – it states the core principle, on which the law is based in general: the principle of justice. Perhaps, antimonopoly regulation is a universal answer to the challenges of the new economy”.