FAS RUSSIA AND SOUTH AFRICAN COMPETITION AUTHORITY DISCUSSED COLLABORATION RESULTS

Head of FAS Igor Artemiev held talks with Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele, South African Competition Commission, at the VI BRICS Competition Conference

Head of FAS highlighted success experience of bilateral collaboration: “I say time and again that working with your agency is always very comfortable. Our joint initiatives find mutual support; we carry out robust joint work, in spite of enormous distance between our countries. Hopefully, it will always be like this”.

The parties also discussed current results and further prospects of cooperation in both bilateral and multilateral – BRICS – formats.

In particular, Igor Artemiev emphasized successful cooperation between Russian antimonopoly body and the Commission under the frame of BRICS Working Groups for developing competition on socially important markets.

Tembinkosi Bonakele supported Head of FAS: “We’d like to continue the work at the level of BRICS Groups. They produce high quality results. I believe, however, that their work can be improved in view of the ideas that we have exchanged at the Conference”.

Igor Artemiev thanked Mr. Bonakele for supporting a FAS idea on putting the cross-border cartels countering on the agenda of UN Competition Conference in 2020. He stressed the importance of prompt and efficient cooperation between competition authorities in antimonopoly investigations and global merger consideration. “Bayer/Monsanto” and “Siemens/Alstom” mergers are among successful examples.

“The most important is that we must painstakingly complete work on big deals, of which we become aware in advance. We can study the relevant markets in advance, coordinate approaches to possible requirements in order to protect competition on the market of our countries. If all BRICS countries are active, we will achieve great success”, reinforced Mr. Artemiev.

Thought the years of active interaction, BRICS competition authorities have achieved considerable results, enabling to get to a new level of cooperation in the form of BRICS Antimonopoly Centre. Igor Artemiev suggested expanding collaboration in this area and move to a fully-fledged Centre with own staff and a “brick-and-mortar”, along with the virtual, office:

“We say all time that our virtual contracts are not enough already. A standing body is necessary to work on deals and cases. It seems that if we approach our Governments with this initiative, we will get support since there are already some practical results”.