ANDREY TSYGANOV: THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK ESTABLISHED 30 YEARS AGO SERVES AS A FIRM FOUNDATION FOR MODERN ANTIMONOPOLY LEGISLATION

Andrey Tsyganov, Deputy Head of the FAS Russia, spoke about the origins and development of antimonopoly legislation in the Russian Federation at the international scientific and practical conference “The State and Development of Legislation on Protection of Competition”

The event was held in St. Petersburg in the North-West Institute of management of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

“The Soviet Union at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s faced serious problems which related to changes in the global market environment and the slowdown in the country's economic, scientific and technological development. There have been crises in the investment process, in the social sphere and in the production of consumer goods. It was planned to reverse the situation with the help of measures to restructure the economy, improve the management system and expand economic freedoms for enterprises and citizens,” the Deputy Head of the FAS Russia said.

As Andrey Tsyganov noted, the Law on Individual Labor Activity was adopted in 1987, a year later-the Law on Cooperation and the Law on State Enterprises. A program was implemented to transfer state-owned enterprises to self-financing.

“Enterprises became more independent so that could sell some of their products themselves. The regulation of labor remuneration has become less strict. At the same time, the problem of the widening imbalance between the incomes of citizens and enterprises and the product supply appeared. As a result, in the second half of the 1980s, the amount of legal savings on savings bankbooks among citizens of the Soviet Union, according to expert estimates, exceeded 250 billion rubles. This amount was not provided with goods and services, the speaker said.

He recalled that in just two or three years, the public consciousness has radically changed, there has been an ideological change, including in terms of ideas about the economy. People began to talk freely about market competition. The first scientific studies of the problems of economic and administrative monopolism in the Soviet economy appeared. In the program “500 days”, which in 1990 was the first program of economic reforms in Russia, officially approved by the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, a significant part of the practical measures was devoted to the eradication of monopolism, denationalization of the economy, development of private entrepreneurship and free competition. In addition, it was aimed at overcoming the imbalance between product supply and demand, offering to actively use the money of people to purchase production assets and premises, shares of newly created joint-stock companies in the process of privatization.

“Unfortunately, the implementation of the planned economic reforms in Russia was considerably complicated by as a result of the “unfriendly” actions of the federal authorities during the so-called war of sovereignty, which in 1990-91 chose the path of administrative increase in retail prices and confiscation monetary reform,” Andrey Tsyganov said.

On July 14, 1990, the newly formed Russian government for the first time established the Federal Antimonopoly Authority (State Committee for Antimonopoly Policy of the Russian Federation (the SCAP of Russia) and started to work immediately on preparation of the legal framework for economic reforms.

“A team of specialists was created (G.E. Avilov, N.I. Klein, A.G. Tsyganov with the personal participation of V. P. Chernogorodsky, Chairman of the SCAP of Russia), which began to prepare new legislative acts in close cooperation with the Russian Parliament. It was responsible for the legislative work of the Committee of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR on Economic Reform and Property. It was headed by Sergey Krasavchenko, and the working group was headed by Vladimir Shumeyko, Deputy Chairman of the Committee. On December 25, 1990, the Law on Enterprises and Entrepreneurial Activity was adopted, and only three months later, on March 22, 1991, the Law of the RSFSR “On Competition and Restriction of Monopolistic Activity in Commodity Markets” was adopted as a result of friendly and effective joint work,” the speaker said.

"The legal framework that was established 30 years ago continues to exist and develop. The competition law is flexible and universal. It is constantly changing and supplemented on the basis of the best practices, including foreign ones, allowing us to make the right and necessary decisions for the development of competition and the economy as a whole, even in the most difficult situations,” Andrey Tsyganov concluded.

The presentation of Andrey Tsyganov can be viewed here.