FAS TAKES PART IN ICN PROJECT “HORIZONTAL COOPERATION AND CRISIS CARTELS IN TIME OF COVID-19”
On November 25, the members of the Cartel Working Group of the International Competition Network (ICN) discussed the further steps in the elaboration of the project “Horizontal Cooperation and Crisis Cartels in Time of Covid-19”.
This new project undertaken by the Cartel Working Group of the ICN and led by the Russian and Italian Competition Authorities will explore the challenges faced by the competition authorities in the exceptional time of crisis dealing with ex-ante assessing horizontal cooperation projects that are deemed to be essential to face the emergency of the Covid-19 pandemic and ex-post detecting assessing and sanctioning crisis cartels.
The project will seek to collect and highlight the main features of competition authorities’ statements and guidance on cooperation during Covid-19 and share experiences on the application of such guidance to specific projects.
Moreover, the project will strive to share experiences on how competition authorities are tackling practical challenges arising from the impact of confinement measures on activities such as running cartel investigations including inspections and interviews.
Overall, the objective of the project is to share experience and discuss the main challenges and pressures that competition agencies will face in the coming months when assessing horizontal cooperation projects for emergency and crisis cartels.