COOPERATION BETWEEN FAS AND COMPETITION AUTHORITY OF EGYPT BREAKS NEW GROUND

The second round of negotiations on a draft Free Trade Agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union and the Arab Republic of Egypt took place on 22-23 April 2019 at the Eurasian Economic Commission. The draft Agreement includes a Chapter on “Competition”.

Russia was represented by Anna Atanasian, Deputy Head of International Communications of the FAS Department for International Economic Cooperation.

She said: “Including competition clauses in trade-and-economic agreements such as Free Trade Agreements, Agreements on protection and encouraging capital investments, etc., is necessary to prevent and exclude anticompetitive practices, increase the transparency level of trading procedures and ensure fair competition rules. The Agreement between EAEU and Egypt will formalize unified principles of competition and streamline the conditions for access of the parties’ goods to each other’s markets, which, in its turn, will increase competitiveness of such goods”.

During the meeting at the Eurasian Economic Commission, the parties also discussed the potential for cooperation between the competition authorities of Russia and Egypt.

“In most jurisdictions, including Russia, consent should be obtained from the party providing confidential information for exchanging such information between the antimonopoly bodies of different countries.  In this context, interaction between competition authorities using confidentially waivers is becoming especially important”, emphasized Anna Atanasian.

The speaker informed the Egyptian delegation that FAS has already accumulated experience of practical sue of waivers in investigating global mergers jointly with foreign competition authorities, particularly,  member-states of EAEU and BRICS, as well as the European Commission.

Anna Atanasian added that in view of the imminent need to systematize the work on applying confidentiality waivers in 2018 Russian antimonopoly body has drafted Recommendations on using confidentiality waivers to consider mergers.

A representative of the Egypt delegation, Head of the International Relations Department, Egypt’s Competition Authority, Mr. Amr Safvat, informed that the antimonopoly regulator in Egypt has been using waivers for a long time in parallel merger with other competition authorities, and also exchanges confidential information investigating violations of the antimonopoly law within the African Union.

Anna Atanasian pointed out that to strengthen bilateral cooperation, FAS enters in the so-called “new level agreements” that include clauses on particular conduct of parties during investigations, on consultations to suppress violations of the antimonopoly law in the territories of the parties to an agreement.

Russia proposed to Egypt’s Competition Authority to consider a possibility of concluding such an agreement. The delegation from Egypt supported the initiative and the parties agreed to explore the issue in the near future.

Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsyganov commented the results of the meeting: “In follow up of the negotiations, it is safe to say that the colleagues from Egypt’s Competition Authority share our understanding about the importance of cooperation and development of interaction and information exchange. It is quite likely that in the near future relations between the competition authorities of our countries will reach a new level”.